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THE STORY OF 
THE IRISH NATION 






THE STORY OF 
VHE IRISH NATION 



BY 

FRANCIS HACKETT 



Drawings by 
HARALD TOKSVIG 




^ ij^ ^ ^fs s um 



NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 

1922 






Copyright, 1992, by 
Fraxcis Hackett 



Copyright, 1922, by 
The Press Pdbhshing Co. 



Printed in U. S. A. 



APR 2b 1922 „ 
§)r,!.A674078 



To 
HERBERT BAYARD SWOPE 

When I came to see yooi just before Christmas you 
asked me if I could write a history of Ireland in three 
days. I said, "not in three days but in three weeks," and 
on this pure mechanical retort you told me to go ahead 
for the World. You raised only one point: Do men make 
the epochs, or do epochs make the men? And you flat- 
tered and impressed me by inquiring if I agreed with 
Hegel. Here, then, is the result, though I had to give it 
more than the heroic three weeks. I owe you much be- 
cause without your superb confidence I should never have 
had the courage to attempt even this popular story. So 
let me thank you — ^and especially for plunging me into 
the history of Ireland, its "perilous seas," its "faery lands 
forlorn." 

F. H. 
'New York City, 
Mwrch 17, 1922. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER P-^GE 

I The Gaelic Period: Pagan . • .1 . . S 

II The Gaelic Period: Christian . . • • SO 

III Clontarf to the Norman Invasion . . 60 

IV Norman Invasion to Henry VIII ... 84 

V The Conquest 106 

VI The Confiscations ISl 

VII The Abyss 162 

VIII The Anglo-Irish Parliament . . . . 189 

IX The Union and the Repeal Movement . 229 

X The Land War 261 

XI The Coming of Sinn Fein ..... 332 

XII The Irish Republic ...••.. 370 

Index . . • . . 397 



X List of Illustrations | 

PA6B ] 

Daniel O'Connell . , . . , ••••:. 248 ; 

Jolin Mitchel 263 I 

William E. Gladstone ...... . • • 283 j 

Charles Stewart Parnell 294 I 

Michael Davitt > 298 ; 

John E. Redmond . . .; ;. 344 [ 

Horace Plunkett 347 ^ 

Arthur Griffith . 359 

James Connolly . .- . . . 361 j 

Roger David Casement ...... . . . 373 I 

Padraic H. Pearse r.^ r. ;. 376 i 

Ulster Showing Parliamentary Divisions . •»i [.i r,; 379 \ 

Eamon de Valera . . . . , , . r.^ f.; •• 387 \ 

Michael Collins . .. i,: ... tt. ..: [»: [•: c c#i :• 389 I 



THE STORY OF 
THE IRISH NATION 



THE STORY OF THE 
IRISH NATION 



CHAPTER I 



THE GAELIC PERIOD: PAGAN 



ON a fine day in the Wicklow Mountains you can 
survey half Ireland. You can look as far north 
as the lovely Mourne range in Ulster, and on the other 
hand as far south as the tip of Wexford, framed in a 
bright sea. 

To take in the full scope of the Irish story you must 
climb to some similar height in imagination, some height 
from which narrow boundaries are released, and the 
prospect becomes emotionally open. To find this emi- 
nence, it is perhaps best to go back a few thousand 
years. Here it is no longer history, as we know it 
nationally and politically, that takes us by the hand. 
It is the much calmer genius of science. 

3 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

From this remote period one can construct no cer- 
tain narrative. There is only the wavering accent of 
tradition, the hint of geology and anthropology, the 
literal "footprints on the sands of time." But by 
great luck we happen to have preserved in Gaelic the 
oldest existing body of Northern literature. From this 
literature we are able to judge or guess at the types of 
men who stand on the sky-line of Irish history. 

This Gaelic past is of intense interest, not only be- 
cause so many records and memorials of it exist, but 
because the Irish people to-day are in such vivid rela- 
tion to their past. Like all invaded and suppressed 
peoples, they have been repeatedly informed that their 
past is wild, obscure, and barbaric; they have been 
encouraged to forget it. But the past swings the fu- 
ture into being. The present key to Ireland is in the 
Gaelic period which flourished so nobly in pagan times, 
and so generously in the Christian period that followed 
Patrick. This civilization, however, is not mon- 
strously peculiar or archaic. The Irish are not racially 
separate from Europe. Their history is a vital part 
of European history. By an accident of political and 
economic suppression the Irish people have been forced 
for centuries to turn all their energies into making a 
fight for survival. But, for centuries, like a river that 

4 



The Gaelic Period: Pagan 

has been dammed and forced out of its channel, the 
Irish nation has at last pushed through its unnatural 
obstacle, established its continuity, and begun to flow 
in freedom. Hence the head-waters of Gaelic civiliza- 
tion are more important to examine than ever. ^ 

To begin with the earlier human inhabitants of Ire- 
land, it is by no means established that they were all 
of one racial stock. It was dark Mediterranean peo- 
ple, we are told, who worshiped around the glacial 
boulders which still remain. It was broad-headed 
^'Beaker" people who erected the great burial mounds 
and laboriously decorated the memorial stones. These 
prehistoric inhabitants of Ireland are hardly dis- 
cernible. They are vaguely known as Iberians and as 
Picts. 

Descendants of early tribes — wiry, black- haired 
Sicilian-like — are still to be met in stony Connacht. 
Perhaps these are "Iberians." Once it was supposed 
that the famous chronologies of the pagan kings had 
historical value and gave a clue to the pre-Celtic Irish, 
but it now appears that their lists of dates and mon- 
archs were compiled on the model of the Old Testa- 
ment after Christianity had come to Ireland. But 

5 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

much is to be inferred from the unwritten records — 
from the burial mounds and the big memorial stones 
and the Druidical circles which are still, to our won- 
derment, sprinkled over Ireland. On a stone at New 
Grange there is to be seen the spiral that came from 
the ^gean, traced by some pre-Celtic hand about 1500 
B. c. Near-by in royal Meath are the many hillocks 
which the fear and awe of a later age raised to the Old 
Men, Under a seventy-foot mound at New Grange, 
with a circle of stones outside, one may now climb 
down to the mysterious set of chambers in which the 
pre-Celtic chiefs were first buried. Here, up to the 
time of Christianity, the pagan kings were laid, some- 
times in urns and sometimes lengthwise and sometimes 
standing up, in full armor and face toward the enemy. 

The early race of men came to be called Firbolg, or 
"men of the bags." In these bags, it is recorded, the 
Greeks, so-called, compelled the Firbolg to haul loam 
for their hillside gardens. Revolting against their 
slavery, the Firbolg escaped from their Mediterranean 
masters, making boats out of their bags. 

However dim this legend, the first man of the pres- 
ent surviving type certainly came to Ireland oversea, 
so one may fairly picture the Firbolg sailing to their 
new country as Lucan pictured the Briton: 

6 



The Gaelic Period: Pagan 

The moistened osier of the hoary willow 

Is woven first into a little boat; 
Then, clothed in bullock's hide, upon the billow 
Of a proud river lightly doth it float 
Under the waterman: 
So on the lakes of overswelling Po 
Sails the Venetian; and the Briton so 
On the outspread ocean. 

Here, as so often, the poet is the antique historian. 
On the west coast of Ireland the little boat "clothed 
in bullock's hide" is still in use. 

But there are other memorials of the bagmen. 
There is a legend that they fought a great battle for 
survival against powerful new-comers in County Mayo, 
near Cory. On this ground to-day there are five groups 
of stone circles, besides a number of burial cairns, 
which may indicate a battle-field or simply a cemetery. 
One of these cairns, however, has always been known 
as the "Cairn of the One Man." Eochy, the king of 
the Firbolg, was bathing in the opening of an under- 
ground river that still connects Lough Mask and 
Lough Corrib. Three of the enemy came upon him 
and demanded his surrender, but before they had taken 
him his own body-servant arrived and, at the cost of 
his life, fought and slew all three. The legend declares 
that in this "Cairn of the One Man," the king, with 
great honor, buried his servant. And when this grave 
was opened, in the middle of last century, by Sir Wil- 

7 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

liam Wilde, father of Oscar Wilde, a single urn was 
found inside which once had held a man's bones. 

The Firbolg, then, were the primitive stock, and 
when the Celts or Gaels came oversea to Ireland about 
350 B. c. (in the so-called Iron Age), they were met, 
as Pilgrim Fathers always seem to be met, by a group 
of "natives." These natives of 350 b. c. have left no 
trace whatever of their language in Ireland, and no 
certain picture of their appearance and social habit, 
but enough is known about them to make it clear that 
they were definitely less far advanced than the fighting 
Celts to whom they succumbed. 

Almost immediately after the arrival of the Celts, 
these older inhabitants seem to have become bottom- 
dog. The Celts were bigger men, they had bigger and 
better boats, they were better clad — above all, they 
had better implements both for fighting and working. 
The result, in the dim age of which we speak, was the 
subjection of the early tribes. 

3 

Who were the Celts .'^ They were a Nordic people, 
sprung from southeast of the Baltic. Some recent 
commentators, not without political bias, have denied 
that the Irish have ever had Celtic antecedents. They 

8 



The Gaelic Period: Pag cm 

assert that the invaders of 350 b. c. were Alpine folk, 
round-headed and tall and fair ; more primitive than the 
Nordic type, though "plastic and imaginative and sym- 
pathetic." But the evidence of race, of the Gaelic 
language, and of the Latin classics points to the inclu- 
sion of Ireland within the range of that Celtic expan- 
sion which took place in the fourth century b. c. 

The Firbolg, however, were not exterminated by the 
Celts or Gaels who came in the fourth century before 
Christ. Although it is certain from all the memorials 
of the North that these Gaelic contemporaries of the 
civilized Greeks were some hundreds of years behind 
the Greeks in culture, it is also certain that their state 
of culture v/as not primitive. They were far enough 
along, at any rate, to tax their subject peoples. But 
they did not kill off the Firbolg. What happened to 
the brave but less advanced type may, in a plain image, 
be suggested by the survival of frame dwellings in a 
modern city like New York. Even latterly a single 
frame dwelling may stand next to a sky-scraper, while 
in outlying districts the frame dwellings may persist 
in groups. The erection of the browns tone type of 
house suggests a later incursion — say the Norse — and 
the survival of this type in a variety of modifications 
and disguises indicates what may happen even with 

9 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

tenements of stone. As to the succession of human 
types, one thing seems clear; nothing, not even the 
skull, is unchangeable in size or shape, and too much 
may be inferred on the hypothesis that bone is fixed, 
like cast-iron. But history and tradition in Ireland 
do indicate that the Firbolg was subordinated, even 
though he was valued as a fighting conscript and gave 
the Heroic Cycles some of their noblest figures. The 
Firbolg generally was pushed into the hills, into the 
woods, into the less desirable lands and the less desir- 
able work. Still, because his property descended 
through the female line, the Gael not only fought his 
way but married his way into supremacy: he took the 
Firbolg chieftainess to wife, and then her property 
went to the Gaelic sept in the natural course of descent. 
For the Gael came to Ireland with social ideas consid- 
erably in advance of those matriarchal tribes who at 
that time supplied the human groundwork of the Brit- 
ish Isles. The Gael, we may assume as certain, was 
of the common Northern stock which is the racial basis 
of modem France, Belgium and Germany. And prob- 
ably the clearest way to conceive the Irish nation is 
as part of this vast Northern adventure which became 
possible once the later inhabitants learned to use iron. 
The conquest of the Firbolg 'by the Gael is now 

10 



The Gaelic Period: Pagan 

viewed with equanimity by all Irish historians. Yet 
historically speaking, the Gael was a ruthless oppres- 
sor. He belittled and misrepresented the people whom 
he conquered. It is a pity we do not possess a Firbolg 
history of the Gael. 

The fact that he was so capable of conquest and 
oppression links him with northen Europe. And his- 
torically it is desirable to remember the European — 
Southeast Baltic — cradle of the Gael, because for many 
centuries the Gael continued to be an element in the 
life of the Continent. It is easy to see, in our own 
time, how the whole fortune of a modern people may 
change in a few years, how their social margin may be 
wiped out and their main jfight become the primitive 
fight to survive. That was the case of the Irish Gael 
after 1600 a. d., and to a great extent after 1200. 
But at the time when the Continent of Europe had 
the least cultural margin of its own, in the chaos of 
the fifth and sixth centuries, it was the Irish Gael's 
turn to contribute. During that period, as a conse- 
quence of the conversion by St. Patrick, the Gael was 
a supreme factor in the life of the Continent. It is 
impossible, on this account, to comprehend the true 
story of the Irish nation unless one keeps realizing the 
fluidity of bounda«ries that now seem to be fixed and 

11 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

the flexibility of channels that now seem to be rigid. 
The Gael is a European not only in stock but in cul- 
tural history. To think of him as separate and iso- 
lated is to make him unintelligible.: 

To return to 350 b. c. The physical Ireland to 
which the Gaels pushed forward under Continental pres- 
sure was a fair, fertile land, with probably the same 
moist climate it has to-day. Like the rest of the 
Northern world, it swarmed with forest. When the 
Picts came Meath alone seems to have been cleared. 
In the shade of its great woods of oak and ash and 
hazel and holly, the fox, the red wolf, the boar, the bear, 
the deer, and perhaps the elk were still at large. But 
one may suppose that the Gaels were rejoiced to find 
grassy plateaus from which they edged the Firbolg 
away ; and clear rivers leaping with salmon, and "fishy 
pools," and sandy shores where boats could easily be 
beached. The wild swan, we may imagine, swam in 
the silences of inland lakes. The wild geese flew over 
Ireland on their journey south. On high hills there 
were places for Druid worship and sacrifice, and on a 
plain in Cavan a place for the idol Cromm Cruach, 
god of the sun, whom the pagan multitudes adored. 

12 



The Gaelic Period: Pagan 

A very old Gaelic poem, ascribed to Finn mac Cool 
(Finn mac Cumhail), may be quoted to suggest the 
country that surrounded and delighted the Gael. 
"May-Day, delightful time! How beautiful the color; 
the blackbirds sing their full lay; would that Leahy 
(Laighaig) were here! The cuckoos sing in constant 
strains. How welcome is the ever-noble brilliance of 
the seasons ! On the margin of the branching woods 
the summer swallows skim the stream. The swift horses 
seek the pool. The heath spreads out its long hair, the 
weak, fair bog-down grows. Sudden consternation at- 
tacks the signs; the planets, in their courses running, 
exert an influence ; the sea is lulled to rest, flowers cover 
the earth." 

From the Irish literature that now remains, thou- 
sands of pages of which are still unpublished and many 
not yet translated into English, it is not impossible 
to suppose the kind of life which these pre-Christian 
groups enjoyed. Each of these groups which occupied 
the fair lands of Ireland circled socially round the domi- 
nant local chief and his family. And the group in 
itself formed a community with a social structure which 
was fairly proof against internal change. The Fir- 
bolg, in the first place, seem to have been in most cases 
"unfree." They were not slaves ; that lot was reserved 

13 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

for the males and females who were captured in raids 
or for the general captives of war. But the Firbolg, 
excellent fighters though they were, formed subject 
communities to do the mechanical work which the pas- 
toral Gaels apparently scorned, and to pay tribute, 
after the fashion of subject communities. The bronze 
rivet-folk, the shield-folk, the chariot-folk, the wheel- 
folk, the plow-folk, were castes of Firbolg, and it is 
suggested that the tameless tinkers of Ireland to-day 
may be a survival of this type of community life. 
Everywhere, except in Ossory and in Down and An- 
trim, the Firbolg succumbed. But besides the "im- 
free" Firbolg, with their fairs and possible exchange of 
wives, there were serfs who were too poor to own cattle. 
They merely had the use of cattle in return for servi- 
tude. 

Wealth was then, as now, in the hands of a ruling 
class. As the "pillow-talk" of king and queen in the 
epic tale of the Raid of Cooley (County Louth) in- 
forms us, wealth consisted of aheep and herds, of horses 
and steeds and studs, of droves of swine "driven from 
woods and shelving glens and wolds," of pails and cal- 
drons and iron-wrought vessels, of jugs and eared 
pitchers, of apparel of kingly colors — purple and blue 
and black and green and yellow and vari-colored — and 



The Gaelic Period: Pagan 



rings and thumb-rings and bracelets and golden treas- 
ures, probably from the rich alluvial gold of Arklow. 
Slave-women, who were worth three cows or five bul- 
locks, were also part of the wealth of that harsh Queen 
Maeve of Connacht who went to war for a bull. 




FROM OLD FRESCOES AND 
STONE SCULPTURE 



Ancient Irish Archer, Kings and Harper 



In this pastoral life, as might be expected, the great 
men were the men of personal strength and beauty and 
pride and skill. When even the petty king traveled in 
state he was accompanied always by his judges and 
poets, by harpers and pipe and horn players, by jug- 
glers and fools, besides his soldiers and stewards and 
servants. Sport and hospitality were as much a part 
of his life as war. His lawful occupations, as the old 
rule laid them down in later times, were legislation on 

15 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Monday, chess on Tuesday, seeing the coursing of 
grayhounds on Wednesday, the pleasures of love on 
Thursday, horse-racing on Friday, delivering judg- 
ment on Saturday, and on Sunday feasting and ale- 
drinking and distributing ale. These activities have a 
flavor of the time and place about them, and yet, with 
the inclusion of the laying of corner-stones, they might 
bring to mind the limited sovereignty of Edward VII. 



In the habitation of Ireland by free Gaels, their un- 
free dependents, and their slaves there was no immedi- 
ate need for a strong central government. Government 
centralized for military reasons was attempted in pagan 
times but not secured. It was hard to secure because 
it was still possible for compact political agencies like 
the sept, or group of kinsmen, to be self-sufficient, like 
small shops before the trusts came. Now, looking 
backward, we can see how "primitive" the Gaelic septs 
were, just as by hindsight it will some day very likely 
be agreed all around that it was wasteful for each rail- 
way in 1922 to try to keep its independence. But to 
the Gaels who occupied Ireland in pre-Christian days 
the main reason they rode to Tara in their chariots 
with their poets and judges and retainers was to enjoy 

16 



The Gaelic Period: Pagan 

the enormous triennial assembly in a festival spirit, 
with tradition and ceremonial in their mind rather than 
the modern idea of representative government. The 
hard political problems were not central in an age in 
which wealth was agricultural, an age content with 
wooden bridges or fords and a few good roads and 
houses built from the timber or wattles with which 
Ireland was so well supplied. The really pressing con- 
flicts concerned tangible wealth and provincial military 
power. By what new local combinations could a proud 
and mettlesome chief hope to aggrandize himself at 
the expense of his natural or acquired enemies? That 
was the sort of problem that had point. Until the 
Strangers came with such strategy that they could 
grip all pastoral Ireland willy-nilly, the need to com- 
bine was not clear. When the necessity was felt to be 
actual, the Gaels did attempt to centralize. Perhaps 
because they had never lived in towns and had there- 
fore missed the quick though dangerous adaptability 
that comes with many contacts and easy associations, 
they persisted in the old ways long after the European 
world had learned new modes. This conservatism, 
joined with their pride in the fighting character of 
their leaders, was probably one element in determining 
their subsequent fortunes, 

17 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Another fact of serious social consequence, as Fro- \ 

• • i 

fessor MacNeill defines, was the way in which the sept ] 

or true family or derbfine was organized in relation j 

to the kingship. 

A derbfine or true family was not grouped according 

to the modern idea of the married couple and their off- "\ 

spring. The Gaelic family took in all the immediate j 

kinsmen of four generations, the head of the sept being : 

reckoned the great-grandfather, whether living or not. | 

1 

Birth and death were consequently of essential impor- j 

tance to the derbfine. When the first son was bom to \ 

the fourth generation a new great-grandfather was thus ; 

created, and consequently a new unit or derbfine. When I 

any male member of the four generations died his hold- \ 

ings went into the family pool and were redivided ; 

i 
among every one according to prescription. In case 

of the kingship, any male member of the derbfine was ; 

in line of succession, the monarch being elected by all \ 

who were eligible. The bad consequence of this law \ 

of succession, as Professor MacNeill points out, was j 

the drive it gave to those men whose fathers and grand- \ 

fathers had not held the kingship to seize the kingship ■ 

for themselves and thus "keep it in the family." 

There was much conflict in early Irish history, and 

18 \ 



The Gaelic Period: Pagan 

most of it sprang from this system. Powerful men 
gambled with life rather than resign themselves to an 
inferior role in their family's district. And where so 
much depended on the chances of mortality, men's 
minds naturally tended to elevate the value of power 
rather than the value of life. To kill a man, as with 
all Aryans, asked for vengeance, not justice. ^ There 
was, besides, the provocation that came to fighting men 
from living near other fighting men whose wealth con- 
sisted in cattle and sheep. There were innumerable 
disputes, a few entirely lawless and wanton, but most 
of them due to the lack of a code supported by force 
and to the fierce personal partisanships of the septs. 
The conflicts of territorial chiefs were possible at any 
time down to the sixteenth century. But there were 
long periods of tranquillity and order during the whole 
Gaelic period, and at least one great effort to consoli- 
date the position of the high-king. A professional 
soldiery, with its promise of order and threat of domi- 
nance, was missing in Ireland. It existed so long as 
the plundering of Britain and Gaul was profitable. 
But later this fighting militia disappeared, and with 
it royal Tara, "home of the warrior-bands." 



19 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

6 

There are many popular notions about Ireland 
which are best explained by reference to this prehistoric 
period in which the life of Ireland is simply the life of j 
a congeries of small, comfortable, prosperous, belliger- | 
ent chieftaincies. One is the famous myth that a | 
handful of Spaniards wrecked on the shores of Ireland i 
after the dispersal of the Armada became thereafter 
the fathers of innumerable and consistently black- \ 
haired descendants. These black-haired people are \ 
now reckoned to come from the Picts or Pretani : 
(Britanni), of whom Professor MacNeill speaks. An- 
other notion is that which Lord Salisbury indulged 
when he spoke of the "Celtic fringe." His image was \ 
meant to convey the fact that the Celtic traces in the i 
British Isles were around the rim of a territory which \ 
some superior group had wiped clean. This theory, ■ 
supported by Rhys, now seems to be upset. The Hot- 
tentots, the "miserable shell-eaters" of that remote age, \ 
appear to have been the unfortunate Pretani. The \ 
Gaelic "fringe" in western Britain, in Argyllshire, in i 
Wales, and in Cornwall, was an embroidery, not a rem- \ 
nant. It came from fresh Irish settlements after the ^ 
collapse of Roman power in Britain. The classic name ] 

^0 ; 



The Gaelic Period: Pagan 

for the Irish Gaels was Scoti, or raiders. Ireland, 
known as Eiru, Eire, Iverne, lerne, Hibemia, Ire-land, 
was also known as Scotia Major. (Scotland, of course, 
was Scotia Minor, named after the Irish who colonized 
and Christianized it.) The fame or ill-fame of the 
Irish Gaels as raiders and plunderers traveled into 
Gaul as well as to Britain. It was one of the reasons 
later advanced by Milton toward justifying the coun- 
ter-incursion of the Normans. 

7 

From these authentic raids of the Gaels we may 
approach the actual history that precedes the coming 
of Patrick. But first we must admit the dimness that 
surrounds Ireland and Britain even as late as the be- 
ginning of the Christian era. 

It has been brilliantly said, "If communications had 
been more easy. Queen Maeve might have entertained 
Caesar Augustus in her palace at Rathcrogan, while 
the fame of Finn MacCool might have added to the 
apprehensions of Aurelian." (Grenville A. J. Cole.) 
This cross-section in chronology suggests how the illu- 
mination of history, so vivid in Mesopotamia and 
Egypt and Greece and later Rome, palpitates and pales 
as one follows the horizontal line to the North. The 

21 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Simness is utterly impenetrable at a time when the 
world is already radiant in the South. Where were 
our ancestors when the Sumerians were writing their 
tablets? How advanced were they when Socrates 
played the fine light of reason on gods and men in the 
glowing Athenian shade? It is only by the aid of 
happily surviving heroic legends and justly compen- 
sated tradition that scholars venture to build up the 
Gaelic past before the time of Patrick. And yet the 
secrets of the race have been in good keeping in the 
hands of Irish poets. Each year, as scholarship im- 
proves, the magnificent epics of Ireland yield up one 
clue after another to prehistoric Gaelic civilization, 
and the age of historical disclosure is not over. It 
was only in 1868 that the superb "Ardagh" chalice 
was brought to light by a man digging potatoes at a 
rath in County Limerick; it dates probably from the 
ninth century. It was only in 1850 that a wayfarer 
picked up on the strand at Bettystown, near Drog- 
heda, the admirable "Tara" brooch. Somewhere, per- 
haps, in a buried shrine, there may still lie hidden in 
Kildare that glorious manuscript which the emotional 
Gerald de Barri declared to have been decorated by 
angels! Time, at any rate, favors our enlightenment 
on this flowering Gaelic period. 



The Gaelic Period: Pagan 
8 

The failure of the Romans to conquer Ireland is, 
in a sense, a landmark of Irish history. By their con- 
quest of half-naked and primitive Britain the Romans 
came in sight of Ireland, but they never attempted to 
extend their empire across the Irish Sea. They lacked 
the extra legion which would have enabled them to 
tackle the Gaels. The Gaels, on their side, were un- 
doubtedly aware of the nearness of that formidable 
imperial power. And the outside contact of the Gaels 
with the Roman empire has left a few records in writ- 
ing and in material form. Once they had established 
a footing in Alba (Alp-a, now Scotland), the Gaels 
advanced toward the Roman wall in the north; Ulster 
built a defensive rampart after that model in the third 
century. The Gaels harried the Roman colony before 
the downfall of the empire, but later, when the "bar- 
barians" came sweeping from the east in the fourth cen- 
tury, a division called the First Scots (apparently in- 
cluding Gaels and pre-Gaels) fought with the Romans 
"to defend the line of the Rhine." New colonies of 
Celts about the same time settled in that accessible 
region of Leinster around Dublin which Belgse and 
Norsemen and Normans and Saxons have always made 

their own. 

23 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Such colonists were not, in the nature of things, j 
objectionable. If the new-comers entered into the \ 
right alliances and lent military aid and paid tribute, \ 

thej were as welcome in Irish politics as the "Polish I 

i 

vote'* or the "Italian vote" or the "Irish vote" in twen- ; 

tieth-century American politics. Immigration and '] 

emigration were more frequent than usually recognized i 

in the early centuries of this era, and the Norse-Irish, \ 

especially, formed what might be termed dissolving | 
combinations. 

9 I 

i 

In the Gaelic land at home early history actively \ 

revolves around one central political theme — ^the strife : 
of Ireland in changing from a state of five main divi- 
sions to a state of seven divisions and sub-kingships. 

Professor MacNeill says that the oldest certain fact in \ 

the political history of Ireland is the "pentarchy." i 

Till 1833 the rock stood near Mullingar from which \ 

the five divisions of the country were traced, and the ; 

sept names that were identified with each of these divi- \ 

sions, either as kings or under-kings, are on record in | 

the genealogies. Dr. Douglas Hyde, in his fascinating ; 

"Literary History of Ireland," gives us the names of ' 

these septs that were best known. In Leinster there i 

were the O'Tooles, the O'Bymes, MacMurroughs or \ 

M \ 



The Gaelic Period: Pagan 

Murphys, O'Conor Falys, O'Gormans, and others, trac- 
ing back to A. D. 123. In Munster were the Mac- 
Carthys, O'Sullivans, O'Keefes, O'Callaghans, the 
MacNamaras and Clancys, the O'Carrolls, O'Meaghers, 
O^Haras, O'Garas, Caseys, and southern O^Conors, 
Ulster had the O'Neills and the O'Donnells. From 
Brian came the O'Conors, kings of Connacht, Mac- 
Dermots, O'Rorkes, O'Reillys, O'Flaherties, MacDon- 
aghs, O'Shaughnesys. And these are by no means the 
last of the leading genealogies. 

The boundaries of Ireland even now are under dis- 
cussion; in the past, change was the rule rather than 
rigidity. From the time of Toole (Tuathal), who 
exacted the huge Borumha or Boru tribute from Lein- 
ster, to the time of Cormac mac Art there was probably 
a constant shifting of power. A new era came with 
Cormac mac Art (227-266). (Mac means son of, O' 
means grandson of.) Working his way forward from 
his own home in Connacht across the central plain, 
Cormac established his kingly power over Meath. By 
seating his dynasty at Tara and making the king of 
Connacht the automatic successor to Tara, Cormac 
gave a trend to history which, in the century succeed- 
ing, was developed by the uniting of Connacht and 
Meath against Ulster and the break-up of that historic 

25 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

division. The domination of Munster, at the same 
time, was achieved by the powerful kings enthroned on 
the Rock of Cashel. Internal security seems now to 
have obtained for a considerable period. The high- 
kings who came later, Niall of the Nine Hostages and 
Nath-i (also called Dathi), attest their dominance at 
home by their militant activity abroad. Niall was 
slain on board ship in the English Channel (404) by a 
Leinster prince, Nath-i killed in Gaul (429). Niall's 
many sons inherited or conquered small principalities 
throughout half Ireland. Vassal communities and 
communities that paid tribute were multiplied under 
this division of NiaU^s territory, which has given place- 
names still in use to countless districts in Ireland. 
Northeast Ulster, however, remained discordant and 
split into four sections. The men of South Leinster, 
at the same time, stood apart. Their mission was to 
recover by force the power which had belonged to them 
when a Leinster king reigned at Tara. 

These dynastic struggles, apparently so meaning- 
less, were the main political activity of the warring 
Gaels. But the conflicts of power that they indicate 
did not cease for many centuries. War rather than 
peace was the chief fact of existence. Love was the 

26 



The Gaelic Period: Pagan 

incentive and the reward of heroes, not of the tamer 
breed of men. 

10 

The barbarous Gaelic king is not a misty figure in 
the Gaelic past. An official word-portrait of Cormac 
at royal Tara fortunately remains for our edification. 
It is to be found in the "Book of Ballymote'^: "Beau- 
tiful was the appearance of Cormac in that assembly ; 
flowing and slightly curling was his golden hair. A 
red buckler with stars and animals of gold and fasten- 
ings of silver upon him. A crimson cloak in wide 
descending folds around him, fastened at his neck with 
precious stones. A torque of gold around his neck. 
A white shirt with a full collar, and intertwined with 
red gold thread upon him. A girdle of gold, inlaid 
with precious stones, was around him. Two wonderful 
shoes of gold, with golden loops, upon his feet. Two 
spears with golden sockets in his hands, with many 
rivets of red bronze. And he was himself, besides, sym- 
metrical and beautiful of form, without blemish or re- 
proach." 

It is not hard to credit the account of a Firbolg 
revolution when one reads of Cormac's magnificence. 

27 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

He was attended by a prince of the blood, a Druid, a 
leech, a judge, a bard, a musician, a story-teller, and 
three stewards. The great Feis, which lasted a week, 
consisted of a royal reception, a parliament, a national 
registry of annals and genealogies, a great festival, and 
a market. Merchants came to barter from as far as 
the Eastern Empire. There was also a great banquet 
in a hall which accommodated a thousand warriors 
seated beneath their shields. The Fiana, or militia, 
were no doubt strongly represented, as well as the terri- 
torial kings and lords. The hall, entered by fourteen 
doors, was three hundred feet long, ninety feet broad, 
and forty-five high. It was, of course, built of wood 
and has long since disappeared. 

The magnificence of Cormac mac Art's gold orna- 
ments is, however, far from incredible. Antique gold 
ornaments weighing five hundred and seventy ounces 
are now in the Irish Academy in Dublin, as against 
thirty-six ounces of British findings in the British 
Museum. As for "Tara's halls," the written record 
must also be taken as credible. The government ord- 
nance survey has confirmed the actual ground measure- 
ments recorded in the *'Book of Ballymote." 

Cormac built the first water-mill in Ireland, which 
released many women from working the primitive quern. 



The Gaelic Period: Pagan 

Had this pagan king the use of letters? Could he 
write? Tradition declares he could, and we find in 
the "Book of Ballymote" his "Instructions to a Prince,'* 
which counsel "self-government without anger, affabil- 
ity without haughtiness, diligent attention to history, 
strict observance of covenants and agreements, strict- 
ness mitigated by mercy in the execution of laws," and 
so on. A king should be elected, he said, "from the 
goodness of his shape and family, from his experience 
and wisdom, from his prudence and magnanimity, from 
his eloquence and bravery in battle, and from the num- 
ber of his friends." 

This, then, is the Ireland of the epic; of gods and 
fighting men. And here, in a. d. 462, comes Patrick 
with his strange message of the Savior, of sin and 
repentance, of hell and of eternal salvation. 



29 



CHAPTER II 

THE GAELIC PERIOD: CHRISTIAN 
1 

ST. PATRICK shines out of the pages of Irish his- 
tory. Looking at his figure as at a bright flame, 
a rim of obscurity surrounds him. But this obscurity 
is unfortunate ; not to see him surrounded by the pagan 
Gaels is to miss the full value of his dramatic success. 

Patrick is a tremendous figure in the history of the 
North. He made a bridge between two cultures — the 
Celtic culture of Cuchulain and Finn and Ossian, of 
Deirdre and Naisi, and the Christian culture of Naza- 
reth and its humble faith in the eternal. Patrick found 
Ireland naively pagan. Without arousing passion or 
confusing the will of those to whom he came, he and 
the great mission that came with him gave the Gael a 
new vision of life, a new habit, a new orientation. 

We are familiar with the efforts of Christian mis- 
sionaries among so-called infidels and heathens in mod- 
em times. We know how the uncomfortable Poly- 

30 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 

nesians have yielded to being photographed in the stiff 
calico night-dresses of Christianity. The efforts of 
heroic missionaries in China, in Japan, among the In- 
dians, among the Africans, have been witnessed by a 
world that estimates the cost of conversion at so much 
per head. But in none of these cases, either among 
the lowly cultured or the highly cultured, has the whole 
stream of a people's life been swiftly and smoothly con- 
verted into a new channel. The victory of the Cross 
in Ireland, against a paganism that has often been de- 
scribed as barbaric, has elements in it which demand 
that the preceding epoch be taken into account. 

The Druid is a dim figure in the ancient Celtic world. 
Wherever the Celt lived — in France, Belgium, parts of 
Britain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Spain — the 
legend of the Druid may be picked up in a trail of 
incantations, ceremonials, and sooth-saying which 
makes him seem like a particularly forbidding and 
superstitious medicine-man. But out of the vague in- 
stitution of the Druid in Gaehc Ireland one gathers 
that something more than a medicine-man was devel- 
oped. The archaic Druid in Ireland does not seem 
to be steeped in the bloody ritual of human sacrifice. 

81 



The Story of the Irish Nation I 

■i 

He appears to be akin to the Magi from the East. He ! 

i 
looked toward the East in his worship. In groves and ; 

by streams he invoked the spirit of the earth and the ■ 

air: there are still mounds and secret places in Ireland ; 

where one feels a presence, as if out of the regiment of \ 

the past there came a breath of the impalpable. Mys- \ 

tery still clings in the hollows and folds of the Irish ! 

hills, and in many a quiet wood one feels the tenseness i 

of the unseen, the wind of an enchantment. i 

It was in these moods of the earth, still so close to ; 
us in Ireland, that the Druid arose in the half-light of 

the past, feeling his way in a universe where he bowed i 

before the sun and yet unconsciously lifted himself in \ 

the majesty of the trees. We discover that as society j 

became more secure and spacious the Druid did not re- ! 

main a mere spokesman of the hidden. In Gaul, Caesar \ 

found that the Druids had become the custodians of ; 
law and the referees of custom. Out of these offices, 

one surmises, branch the various social functions of the ! 
brehon or judge, the file or bard, the oUamh or sage. 

The brehon law did not develop as did Roman law, 

adapting itself with an empire and changing (as well ; 

i 
as law can change) with the social organism. Rewrit- | 

ten and revised though it was, the brehon law clearly ! 

remained a body of precepts not different in kind from i 

32 I 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 

other Aryan precepts, but stabilized with respect to a 
conservative form of existence. 

We know from Cormac mac Art's instructions what 
the ideals of the prince were in the Gaelic period : from 
the regulations in the brehon law we know the system 
of fines for acts of violence, the laws permitting cattle^ 
seizure, the ancient custom of fasting or hunger-strik- 
ing on a debtor. With the allied functions of law- 
giving, arbitration, deciding and chronicling genealo- 
gies, and recording traditions, the bards became 
intimately associated; and the Druid, the judge, the 
poet, the chronicler, are generally mentioned in one 
breath. So important did these ofBces become that the 
bards, moving about the country like a swarm of honey- 
bees and settling on whatever ruling family they elected 
to patronize, had almost as great privileges as their 
hosts. They were subdivided in rank among them- 
selves, but the chief poet ranked next to the king, was 
attended by a considerable staff of retainers, and lived 
handsomely at the public expense. To rise to this 
eminence he had to serve a long apprenticeship. His 
feats of memory were remarkable, but, having reached 
a height of privilege, he worked to maintain that scheme 
of privilege for the sake of himself and his order. 

The bards, as is often said, may have pressed their 

38 



.^A 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

advantage too hard in pre-Christian times. The fact 
remains that the bardic institution preserved and en- 
hanced a genuine culture. This, because of its inherent 
refinement and civihty and rich imaginativeness, is the 
basis on which alone Patrick and his company could 
have built. 

"Irish epic story," as de Jubainville says, "barbarous 
though it is, is, like Irish law, a monument of a civiliza- 
tion far superior to that of the most ancient Germans ; 
if the Roman idea of the state was wanting to that civil- 
ization, and if that defect in it was a radical flaw, still 
there is an intellectual culture to be found there, far 
more developed than among the primitive Germans." 
This culture is not a matter of speculation. The epics 
in fine meter and in prose are at last finding their way 
into the English-speaking world where for generations 
it has been almost a point of etiquette to be ignorant 
of them. 

3 

Patrick was not the first Christian to come to Ire- 
land. He did not banish the snakes. The snakes 
were excluded geologically. The fact that there were 
no snakes was known in Firbolg times when Irish soil 
was exported to kill off snakes in other lands. The 
absence of snakes was noted definitely by Solinus in 

34 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 

the third century. As for the Christianizing of Ire- 
land, it was a mission that beckoned many British 
Christians of the fourth and fifth centuries: several 
are recorded to have established themselves in Ireland. 
But if popular tradition has embroidered the story of 
Patrick, it has done less than justice to his positive and 
massive personality. Luckily for us, the man himself 
is to be found in a poignant document copied from his 
own text in a manuscript itself over 1100 years old. 
This is the "Confession," which is as authentic as the 
"Confession" of St. Augustine. 

What Patrick gives us is nothing like that search 
in the labyrinth of man^s soul which the exiled Augus- 
tine penned in Hippo. Patrick was not a psychologist 
but a man of action. His story, however, has pro- 
found feeling and dignity. It spreads before us a true 
and telling account of a great enterprise. 

Patrick was a Briton. He was born on one of the 
rivers in the north of Britain, probably at Dumbarton 
on the Clyde. The name he gives in his "Confession" 
seems simply to mean Riverhead Tavern. He was 
known as Succat till he took the name Patricius. His 
father was a considerable official of the waning Roman 
colony. In the time that Patrick was born, at the 
beginning of the fifth century, the Gaels were out in 

S5 



The Story of the Irish Nation ^ 

I 

strong fleets to raid the coast of Britain. At the time ^ 
he was sixteen years old his father's estate was visited , 
by the troops of the high-king Niall, and he and his ■ 
sister and "thousands of others" were taken as slaves, j 
"When a mere youth, nay a beardless boy," he says \ 
pathetically, "I was taken captive, before I knew what j 
to seek and what to avoid; and therefore I am even j 
to-day ashamed and greatly dread to show my igno- ■ 
ranee, because not being learned I cannot express my- 
self in a few words." ■ 

This boy was separated from his sister. For six ' 
years, in Antrim or Down, homesick and naked and j 
lonely, he worked in the harsh strangers' land. "Now^ \ 
after I came to Hiberione, I herded flocks daily, and I j 
prayed often during the day. Love of God and fear 
of Him and faith grew in me and moved my soul so | 
that I must have prayed a hundred times a day, and as i 
many times in the night, though I stayed in the woods ' 
and on the mountains. I was moved to pray before 
dawn, and in snow or frost or rain; yet I took no \ 
harm." j 

When he was twenty- two he had a vision: "the ship | 
is ready for you." He believes that at last he is to go* \ 
home to his people, among the Britons. When he | 
reaches the ship and offers to work his passage the ship- | 

36 



The Gaelic Period; Christian 

captain refuses him, but as he turns back to his lodg- 
ing, praying in his despair, one of the crew hails him, 
**Come back, they want you!" The ship, the cargo, 
the crew, the voyage, remain in his memory all his life. 
Dogs were part of the cargo — great Irish wolf-hounds. 
When they reach port they start overland, and for 
twenty-eight days they travel through a land famished 
after the wars against the Huns. At last they come 
to Italy, but in the end Patrick starts north and 
reaches his folk in Britain. 

And there, though he was "welcomed like a son," 
he hears the "voices of the Irish." "Come and dwell 
with us !" Would he heed these voices ? He was a 
patrician. He had friends and family who begged 
him not to heed. But he who had not believed in the 
living God in his prosperity had been brought to Him 
in daily hunger and nakedness. With sublime spirit, 
Patrick says, "These things brought good, for through 
them I was corrected by the Lord, so that I work and 
toil now for the well-being of others, I who formerly 
took no care, even for myself." And so, "for His 
sake" he "willingly left home and people though they 
offered me many gifts with tears and sorrow." 

In this fifth century of world war and desolation 
and upheaval, the pure and exalted faith that Patrick 

37 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

had conceived comes as a new light on life. He is very 
human. He says: "Not my grace it was, but God 
who conquered in me and resisted them all, so that I 
came to the Irish people to preach the Gospel — and to 
bear insults from unbelievers, to hear reproaches for 
having gone abroad, and to suffer many persecutions 
even unto chains. My rank of freeman too I had to 
give up for the sake of others.'^ 

Like John Bunyan, Patrick burns with faith, but his 
faith is the faith of a great and influential missionary. 
"Willingly would I see my own people and my native 
land again, or even go so far as Gaul to visit my 
brothers, and see the faces of my Master's holy men. 
But I am bound in the spirit and would be unfaithful 
if I went. I fear to lose the labor which I began. 
Yet not I would lose it," he adds quickly, "but Christ, 
the Lord, who bid me come hither, to spend my whole 
life in serving, if the Lord should so will." 

Before he came, he says, they all opposed his mis- 
sion to Ireland. Thejr talked behind his back, saying : 
" *He wishes to risk his life among enemies who know 
nothing of the Lord,' not speaking maliciously, but 
opposing me because I was so ignorant. Nor did I 
myself at once perceive the grace that was in me. . . .'* 

There speaks the leader. But Patrick was as hum- 

38 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 

ble as he was strong. He lived his life "for the hope 
of the life eternal," and he governed himself strictly 
in the ways of poverty and plain living. He took no 
jewels and lavished his own gifts on those who conveyed 
him from one domain to another. "You know, and 
God knows," he declares, "how from my youth I have 
lived among you with belief in the truth and sincerity 
of heart. Even with the tribesmen among whom I 
dwell I have kept faith and will keep it. God knows 
I have deceived no man in anything, nor ever shall, for 
God's sake and the sake of His church, lest persecution 
should be stirred up against them and us all, and the 
name of the Lord be blasphemed through me." 

And then he says, as though to himself: "I look for- 
ward daily to a violent death, or to be taken prisoner 
and sold into slavery or some like end. But I fear 
none of these . . . but let me not lose His people whom 
He has purchased here at the very end of the earth." 

It is usually intimated that Patrick came to Ireland 
alone in 432, probably carrying a crozier. This is 
fantastic. We learn from the "Book of Armagh," as 
Dr. Douglas Hyde points out, that he arrived with 
members of his own family, with bishops, priests, dea- 
cons, and others. He traveled with a coadjutor, a 
psalm-singer, an assistant priest, a local brehon, a 

39 



The Story of the Irish Nation '\ 

^'personal champion" or strong-arm man, an attendant, * 

a bell-ringer, a cook, a brewer, a chaplain, two waiters, . 

and a commissariat. Three women, one of them his | 

sister, came to make vestments and altar linen. Be- i 

sides, there were three smiths and three artisans. Like ; 

the evangelists of the twentieth century, Patrick built \ 

i 
his own tabernacle wherever he went, and as he made i 

converts of the right sort he hastily prepared them ; 

and ordained them priests and equipped them. | 

The Irish were ripe for him ; from a. d. 432 onward ; 

he met with one of those responses which remind us how 

■j 

capricious and at the same time how dramatic is the j 
course of history. Patrick came to Ireland when no i 
vested interest really opposed him. He was able to ' 
level the idol Cromm Cruach, to "bum the books of the , 
Druids at Tara," and at Armagh, less identified with \ 
paganism, to settle down after twenty years to prepare ; 
young men for his mission. This was the school to : 
which, two hundred years later, the Anglo-Saxons came - 
in such numbers that one-third of the city was called \ 
"the Anglo-Saxon third." 

The waves from Patrick's mission rolled out in circle i 
after circle for hundreds of years. The early Chris- ■ 

40 \ 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 

tians in civilized Rome, be it remembered, were not 
long in encountering the Roman state. In the name 
of the state they were led to the arena. There was no 
such state in Ireland and no such arena. There were 
no Christian martyrs in Gaelic Ireland. The religion 
of Christ was not introduced by the Irish chiefs as it 
was by the excellent Olaf Trygvesson, with a cross in 
one hand and a red-hot poker in the other. But if 
Christianity flowed into Ireland with astonishing ease 
it must be noted that Patrick in no sense overturned 
or indeed challenged the political system. By preach- 
ing salvation he gave Ireland a religion that overlapped 
and superseded paganism and drew the whole Gaelic 
people to a new and wonderful preoccupation. But 
the self-sufficient, belligerent political units remained. 
Within a few centuries the king-bishop and the fighting 
monk were just as ready for warfare as their lay 
brothers. What was immediately changed was the cul- 
tural and, in time, the ecclesiastical focal centers of 
Ireland. 

At first, apparently, the Irish Church was quite inde- 
pendent of Rome, since Britain, as well as Ireland, was 
entirely cut off from Rome for a hundred and fifty 
years. Armagh and lona showed decided reluctance 
to combine even with the Saxon converts. 

41 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

At the Synod of Whitby, a. d. QQ^, the Irish Church 
stubbornly resisted conformity on such points as the 
date of Easter, the mode of the tonsure, unconditional 
celibacy, etc. Because Patrick had given Ireland the 
Jewish way of reckoning time, the Irish Church was in 
danger of being deemed Jewish until it yielded on its 
calendar in the beginning of the eighth century. This 
was not the first conflict with Rome. 

But it is not in ecclesiastical history that one finds 
the blossoming of the Gaelic period. It is in the found- 
ing of schools and colleges, the building of stone 
churches, the illumination of beautiful missals, and the 
exquisite enamel and metal handicraft of the monas- 
teries, the teaching of Greek and Latin, of history and 
geography and mathematics and philosophy and natu- 
ral science, the enlistment of the bards, and the con- 
version of kings. 



Patrick's seminary at Armagh had in it the seed of 
a great scholastic activity. Three hundred and fifty 
bishops, "mostly Franks, Romans and Britons, but 
with some Irish," compose Patrick's first order in Irish 
ecclesiastical reckoning. The second order, to which 
St. Columcille belonged, are the men who founded those 

42 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 

schools of which the Irish manuscripts give so radiant 
an account. 

The school of St. Enda drew to the Isle of Aran Mor 
such saints as Finnian of Moville, Ciaran of Clon- 
macnois, Jarlath of Tuam, Carthach of Lismore, 
Keevin of Glendalough. Clonard, near the Boyne, had 
three thousand students around it. Founded in 520, 
it flourished until the vikings raided it scores of times 
in the bloody ninth century. Cionfert on the Shannon, 
founded by Brendan in 556, had at its head the man 
who wrote "Navigatio Brendani." It lasted until rav- 
aged in the twelfth century. Clonmacnois, founded in 
544, became the proudest university of this period. To- 
day, as Dr. Douglas Hyde records, "its church-yard 
possesses a greater variety of sculptured and deco- 
rated stones than perhaps all the rest of Ireland put 
together." The kings of Connacht, the O'Conors, had 
their own church there. So had the Ui Neill of the 
South. The MacCarthys of Munster, the MacDermots 
of Moyburg, the O'Kellys of Hy Maine, had their own 
mortuary chapels. Alcuin, "the most learned man at 
the French court," was educated there, as a grateful 
letter of his testifies. On ten occasions the Northmen 
penetrated to Clonmacnois and commenced the work 
of destruction which the English of Athlone completed. 

43 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

At Bangor, on Belfast Lough, a school was founded in i 
550, described by St. Bernard as "a noble institution, i 
which was inhabited by many thousands of monks." i 
From Bangor came Columbanus, the evangelist of Bur- 
gundy and Lombardy ; St. Gall, who preached in j 

i 

Switzerland ; and Dungal, the astronomer, who founded \ 
the University of Pavia. The fate of Bangor was more J 
dreadful than that of the other colleges, nine hundred I 
monks being slain by the raiding Norse. I 

Dr. Hyde enumerates Lismore, attended by Gauls, | 
Teutons, Swiss, and Italians in 700; Moville, whose 
founder became Frigidius of Lucca in Switzerland; | 
Clonenagh near Maryborough; and the famous and 
beautiful Glendalough. Of these Glendalough was i 
sacked by the Danes. Strongbow's son began in 1174* 1 
the harrying of Lismore, which, after a Norman was ■ 
killed near-by, ended in its complete obliteration as a i 
^'reprisal" in 1S07. Cork, Ross, Innisf alien, Iniscaltra, | 
are other schools on which Douglas Hyde dilates in his \ 
admirable "Literary History of Ireland.'* ] 



The degree of learning attained in these Irish schools ' 
is the subject of present discussion. The free creative \ 
mind, certainly, was not the object of medieval system. 

44* ! 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 



These schools had closed minds. But if no such fresh 
fountain gushed forth as distinguished the Age of 
Pericles, the actual service to scholarship must not be 




Great Cross 
Monasterboice 



minimized. Cummian's famous letter, says Professor 
Stakes, proves "that in the first half of the seventh 
century there was a wide range of Greek learning, not 
ecclesiastical merely, but chronological, astronomical, 
and philosophical, away at Durrow in the very center 

45 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

of the Bog of Allen." "The classic tradition," says 
Darmesteter, "to all appearances dead in Europe, burst 
out into full flower in the Isle of Saints, and the Renais- 
sance began in Ireland 700 years before it was known 
in Italy. During three centuries Ireland was the asy- 
lum of the higher learning which took sanctuary there 
from the uncultured states of Europe. At one time 
Armagh, the religious capital of Christian Ireland, was 
the metropolis of civilization." "Ireland," Zimmer 
puts it, "can indeed lay claim to a great past; she 
cannot only boast of having been the birthplace and 
abode of high culture in the fifth and sixth centuries, 
at a time when the Roman Empire was being under- 
mined by the alliances and inroads of German tribes, 
which threatened to sink the whole Continent into bar- 
barism, but also of having made strenuous efforts in 
the seventh and up to the tenth century to spread her 
learning among the German and Romance peoples, thus 
forming the actual foundation of our present Conti- 
nental civilization." 

These are big words. Professor Eoin MacNeill, who 
does not deal in words of this size, believes that Arch- 
bishop Theodore, who taught Greek at Canterbury 
from QQ4< till 690, was the man who gave Greek its cur- 
rency in Irish schools. "During the sixth, seventh, 

46 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 



and eighth centuries," says the realistic MacNeill, "Ire- 
land, enjoying freedom from external danger and hold- 
ing peaceful intercourse with the other nations, made 




PROM STONE SCULPTURE AT 
BRASCNOSB COLUecE, OXFORO 



John Scotus Erigena 

810 — 880 



no inglorious use of her opportunity. The native learn- 
ing and the Latin learning throve side by side. The 
ardent spirit of the people sent missionary streams 
into Britain and Gaul, western Germany and Italy, 
even to furthest Iceland. And among all this world- 



The Story of the Irish Nation 
intercourse there grew up the most intense national 



consciousness." 



One powerful original mind, however, must not be 
forgotten. John Scotus Erigena was an Irish layman 
in the middle of the ninth century whose Greek erudi- 
tion astounded the Vatican librarian. But he stood 
for more than erudition. His thinking was indepen- 
dent enough to allow him to produce a system of phi- 
losophy which set the church councils in motion to 
condemn and demolish him. 



Of the Irish missionaries who went afield, the fiery 
Columcille (also called Columba) founded his great 
monastery in lona in 563. This was the base from 
which Scotland was evangelized. Columbanus, from 
Leinster, went among the Franks with a company of 
missionaries and from 590 till he died at Bobbio in 615 
he labored among barbarians with power and intre- 
pidity. St. Gall, an Irishman who was with Colum- 
banus, gave his name to the famous Swiss monastery. 
Dagobert, the Merovingian king, who was educated in 
Ireland, retired in 656 to a cloister founded by an Irish 
abbot in France. Into Bavaria missionaries spread 
from Luxeuil, Columbanus's earlier headquarters. The 

4)8 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 

Irish pilgrims continued to pour into the continent as 
evangelists and scholars and scribes, a process which 
continued until Ireland itself came within the savage 
sweep of the vikings. 

The English have contributed virtually nothing to 
the study of Gaelic relics. Continental scholars, luck- 
ily, have not been so insular. Dr. Douglas Hyde 
remarks "the keenness with which their relics have been 
studied by European scholars — French, German, and 
Italian. The most important are the glosses found in 
the Irish manuscripts of Milan, published by Ascoli, 
Zeuss, Stokes, and Nigra; those in St. Gall, published 
by Ascoli and Nigra ; those in Wurtzburg, published 
by Zimmer and Zeuss ; those in Carlsruhe, published by 
Zeuss; those in Turin, published by Zimmer, Nigra, 
and Stokes in his Goidelica ; those in Vienna, published 
by Zimmer in his Glossse Hibernicas and Stokes in his 
Goidelica; those in Berne, those in Leyden, those in 
Nancy, and the glosses on the Cambrai Sermon, pub- 
lished by Zeuss." This, of course, is not an exhaus- 
tive list. 

Enough has been quoted, possibly, to carry the mind 
beyond the circle of Ireland to that nightmare Europe 
of which so little is known and to which the Irishman 
seems to have brought sweetness and light. But one 

49 



The Story of the Irish Nation 



must return to Kells and Armagh and Durrow, where 
a love of beauty led the early monks to lavish on their 
illuminated manuscripts an almost indescribable in- 
vention and care. Theirs was not an emancipated art. 




The 

Ardagh Chalice 



About Ni-rvtK Centw 



t^J 



It was an art cloistered within the limits of a few 
square inches, intensive far beyond the point of naked 
vision. It shut out the world and looked with shining 
concentration at the infinite minutiae of interlacing pat- 
terns and the jewels of the spectrum shining in a drop 
of dew. But if the end is microscopic, the means that 

50 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 

are employed toward it are ravishing. The "Book of 
Kells," now in Trinity College, Dublin, is of its kind 
incomparable. No one can contemplate it without joy- 
ous amazement. 

The Ardagh chalice and the Tara brooch have the 
same quality of distinctive design and exquisitely re- 
fined handicraft. With such esthetic beginnings as 
these established in the eighth and ninth centuries much 
might have followed. . , . 

8 

But before touching upon the Northman or the 
Norman we must glance at the political and economic 
course of Ireland from the time that Patrick arrived, 
and with him the era of more direct and reliably re- 
corded history. The advent of Patrick had one 
politico-moral effect; it put an end to the Irish raids 
on Britain. Saxon raids on Ireland were later chroni- 
cled; Egfrid was killed on Irish soil in 684, and from 
that date for nearly thirty years there were Saxon 
incursions, coinciding with Pictish pressure from the 
north and the strained ecclesiastical relations. No 
matter how the Irish battled, however, it was no longer 
on the barbaric principle of Cormac mac Art that it 
was the duty of a king to war on the foreigner. That 

51 



The Story of the Irish Nation 



principle, which underlies imperialism, has not ap- 
peared in Irish polity since St. Patrick. It was for \ 
power inside Ireland that the Irish chiefs contended, 
until Brian Boru (spelled Boromha in the Irish lan-^ \ 
guage) became "emperor of the Irish.'^ i 
The making of the Irish state was a task of supreme \ 
difficulty, not fully achieved; but the same must not 
be said about the making of the Irish nation. Though ! 
there were a hundred territories and a hundred local \ 
groupings, there was a unification of land tenure and \ 
judicial habit and a community of religion. To the 
Firbolg or plebeian population the church gave as good '\ 
standing as to the Gael. This gradually merged the | 
two peoples into one, and quickened the process of ' 
nationality. The consciousness of Ireland, a country 
beloved, is to be found as early as Columcille, 563. 
Few poems breathe such passionate love of land as ' 
Columcille^s. He looks back on th^ shore as he sails ] 
in his middle age to his final mission in Scotland : 

There 's an eye of gray ; 

Looks back to Erinn far away: ; 

While life last, 't will see no more ; 

Man or maid on Erinn's shore! j 

This is only one of the countless times that Irishmen | 
of every age in Christendom have yearned to their land 

5% \ 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 

as to a person, their fiber knitted to the earth of Ireland 
so that to leave it is a death. 

The political process in Ireland, even after the com- 
ing of Patrick, was still one of sept warring with sept. 
The Gaels sought rather than avoided the arbitrament 
of war. In the two hundred years of Connacht's domi- 
nance in the limestone plain, the men of Leinster, safe 
in their own fastnesses, tried continually to recover 
Tara. A new unrest came from within. Connacht's 
power was dispersed with the subdivisions that were 
made to provide for Niall's many sons. Through those 
subdivisions there were more Ui Neill outside Con- 
nacht than in Connacht. These Ui Neill, north and 
south, combined to displace the western branch from 
the monarchy of Ireland. They smashed Connacht at 
the battle of Ocha, 483. This gave the high-kingship 
to the Ui Neill for centuries, but Munster had yet to 
make a bid for supremacy. The kings of Cashel grew 
strong and aggressive until, after a predatory career 
of extraordinary ferocity, Feidlimid came in conflict 
with the reigning Niall over the domination of Leinster. 
In 908, at the Battle of Belach Mugna, the king-bishops 
of Cashel played their last game of royal chess. Their 
defeat and subordination left the Ui Neill in power. 

53 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

In the weakening of Cashel, however, the rest of Mun- ! 
ster was brought into the arena. Under Brian Boru ; 
this new power combined with Connacht so as to give \ 
him the headship of Ireland. West Munster, in the '\ 
end, did not hold the supremacy. This was one of the j 
elements that gave opportunity to the Anglo-Normans. 1 

But it would be unhistorical to think of these con- \ 
jflicts as peculiar to the Irish nation. One has only to ; 
consider the condition of Britain in the same period j 
to realize the essential disorder of the ninth, tenth, and ? 
eleventh centuries. The eruption of the vikings at the i 
same time adds one more wild distraction to the preda- '\ 
tory life of northern Europe. \ 

The vikings came sweeping the ocean toward the end 
of the eighth century. The most formidable pagan ; 
fighters of the North, they mastered the seas and the | 
islands of the seas in their swift, light, stalwart sea- j 
craft. In 795 they first came to Ireland. In the be- \ 
ginning they had no political purpose: they were con- j 
tent to fall on the rich and pacific monasteries near 
the coast, kill the monks, whom they surprised, and 
help themselves to vestments, gold ornaments, chalices, I 

54 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 

fine hangings, stores, and wines. These expeditions 
brought terror to Christian Ireland: they stimulated 
the Northmen to repeat them. An uneven fight raged 
for fifty years. In the meantime the tidings of Chris- 
tianity came to the North itself. Thereafter the inva- 
sions of Ireland became part of the tremendous and 
almost successful effort of the Scandinavians to con- 
quer the British Isles. 

For one must see the Scandinavians as penetrating 
Russia, conquering Sicily, sailing up the Seine and the 
Thames, settling Normandy, holding the Hebrides for 
centuries, dominating England, and seeking to bring 
all Ireland under control. 

When the Norsemen first got their footing in Ireland 
it was as predatory chiefs. The names Carlingford, 
Strangford, Howth, Dublin, the Skerries, Leixlip, Wex- 
ford, Waterford, and Limerick testify to their suc- 
cesses, which built up towns where the Irish knew no 
towns. The heathens, as they were, reached a Dublin 
which was a cluster of huts. They made it a stockaded 
settlement. By 853 Olaf and Ivar were j oint kings 
of Dublin. For many years they had no great secur- 
ity in Ireland, though Dublin was a safe base for their 
attacking Britain, but their incursions scarred and 
seared the eastern half of Ireland from 879 to 920, 

55 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

The downfall of Cashel allowed the Norse to slip round 
the coast in 914. In that year they secured Water- 
ford, held it against Niall, and in 920 secured Lim- 
erick. Within a few years they were thick in the con- 
flicts of West Munster. Brian beat them on the plain 
where Limerick Junction is now situated, twenty miles 
from Limerick. After his brother was murdered with 
the connivance of the Cashel chiefs, Brian went on to 
striking victories. In these conflicts, however, the 
Norse were not lone-handed. They merged with the 
Irish in the general tribal alignments of the time. 

10 

Brian^s victories gave him a very great prestige. 
A man of intellectual force, he saw the waste of dissen- 
sion and the necessity for a strong central power. He 
equally realized that Ireland must be cleared of "for- 
eigners." He proceeded firmly, a diplomat rather than 
a conqueror. 

Except for the forces of Leinster, which evaded the 
fight at Clontarf on Good Friday, 1014, all Brian's 
ranks stood close against the Fair Foreigners and the 
Dark Foreigners. The Irish chronicles describe the 
stupendous combat. It is such as one might expect 
from two races who regarded valor as the true test of 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 

a man and the chronicle as valor's celebration. Lined 
up on both sides as shock troops, gold helmets gleam- 
ing, standards waving, poisoned spears and swords the 
weapons, at least three thousand Norse were in the 
end to meet their death. "There was a field and a ditch 
between us and them," reports one witness, "and the 
sharp wind of spring coming over them toward us ; and 
it was no longer than the time that a cow could be 
milked, or two cows, that we continued there, when not 
one person of the two hosts could recognize another — 
we were so covered as well our heads as our faces and 
our clothes with the drops of gory blood carried by the 
force of the sharp cold wind which passed over them 
to us." 

The battle began at high tide. Lasting until high 
tide, the laboring Norsemen in armor were pursued 
across the LifFey and slain "in hundreds and in bat- 
talions." A heap of their weapons was dug up some 
years ago in Rutland Square. 

Then it was that Brian's daughter spoke; 

"It appears to me," said she, "that the Foreigners have gained 
their inheritance." 

"What is that, O girl?" said Amhlaibh's son [a Norwegian]. 

"The Foreigners are only going into the sea as is hereditary to 
them. I know not whether it is the heat that is on them, but never- 
theless they tarry not to be milked." 

The son of Amhlaibh became angered with her, and he gave 
her a blow which knocked a tooth out of her head. 

57 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Brian, too old to fight, stayed with his horse-boy 
behind the battle. There he prayed for victory, asking 
between times "how the battalions were circumstanced/' 
"I see them," the horse-boy reports, "and closely con- 
founded are they . . . and not more loud to me would 
be the blow in Tomar's wood if seven battalions were 
cutting it down than are the resounding blows on the 
heads and bones and skulls of them." Now the banner 
of Murchadh is standing, now it droops. . . . The old 
king hears that the Foreigners are defeated, and all but 
one group fled. He refuses to leave the field. He 
foretells his death, giving orders for his burial at 
Armagh. Then the Northman Brodir reaches him and 
slays him, to meet his terrible fate in a few minutes 
at the hands of Brian's followers. 

A touch of chivalry: 

Then flight broke out throughout all the host. 

Thorstein stood still while all the others fled and tied his shoe- 
string. Then Kerthialfad asked him why he ran not as the others. 

"No, thank you," said Thorstein, "I can't get home to-night; I 
live in Iceland." 

Kerthialfad gave him peace. 

As described in the Icelandic record, Brian was 

victor: 

I have been where warriors wrestled, 
High in Erin sang the sword, 
Boss to boss met many bucklers, 
Steel rung sharp on rattling helm; 

58 



The Gaelic Period: Christian 

I can tell of all their struggle; 
Sigurd fell in flight of spear; 
Brian fell, but kept his kingdom 
Ere he lost one drop of blood. 

This battle did not drive the Scandinavians from 
Dublin, but it saved the Irish nation. In 1016 Cnut 
conquered England, but Ireland could not be reckoned 
in the Scandinavian empire of the North* 




Aprea .o^mtiv* mroua- 



59 



CHAPTER III 

CLONTARF TO THE NORMAN INVASION 
1 

RIAN BORU had a strong policy for Ireland. 
"The peace of Erin was proclaimed by him, both 
of churches and people, so that peace throughout all 
Erin was made in his time." He dealt severely with 
criminals, stopped trespass and robbery, repaired 
fortresses and forts, made bridges and causeways and 
highroads. He rebuilt the monasteries that the North- 
men had shattered, constructed churches and at least 
one round tower, and reestablished the schools. He 
sent men abroad "to buy books beyond the sea and the 
great ocean." The word boru, which means tribute, 
was not, however, attached to his name for nothing. 
We learn from mac Liag how the flocks and herds came 
pouring to his palace at Kincora, in Clare. Many a 
fat hog, and many a fat cow, and a hundred and fifty 
butts of wine from the Danes of Dublin and a tun of 

60 



Clontarf to the Norman Invasion 

wine for every day in the year from the Danes of 
Limerick. 

But, like so many strong rulers who seize power 
irregularly, Brian Boru conquered a sphere of respon- 
sibility which he left no one to fill. It is true that he 
broke the Northmen. He freed the territory where a 
cow "durst not be milked for an infant of one night, 
nor for a sick person, but must be kept for the steward 
or bailiff or soldier of the foreigners." But to do this 
eiFectively he had to override the succession to the high- 
kingship, and the men who came after him copied only 
his irregularity. Till well after the coming of the 
Normans the O'Conors of Connacht, the O'Neills of 
Tyrone, the MacMurroughs of Leinster, and the 
O'Briens of Thomond kept the kingship in contest and 
reigned, if at all, "with opposition." When the reign- 
ing chiefs made common cause and restored the mon- 
archy in 1258 it was only for a few years. 

This situation seems anarchical, from the point of 
view of modern city-dwellers, who cannot survive for 
six months without a strong central government. But 
in the age of Brian Boru, we must recollect, the modem 
military state had not developed. Commerce was 
young. Tuns of wine, we have seen, came overseas to 

61 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

Ireland. For many centuries "noble clothes" were sold i 
at the Kildare fair by Greek-speaking Gauls, and for- | 
eign gold was weighed out and paid for Irish hides and ' 
salted meat and wool. From the sixth century Spain ! 
had traded with Ireland, and for many centuries — ^up I 
to 1170 — the English slave was an article on the Irish ' 
market. But, in spite of the sea-power of the North- 
men and the international commerce which followed ; 
piracy, trade had not yet demanded or matured the i 
type of state to which we are now habituated. Dis- \ 
order was prevalent everywhere in the North. 

The massacre of the Danes in England in 1002 was \ 
scarcely an orderly event, and yet Angle-land was too I 
feeble to emancipate itself even by massacre. "Wessex, \ 
Mercia, and Northumbria," says John Richard Green, 
''remained separate political bodies which no efforts of ! 
force or polic}^ seemed able to fuse into one." i 

Under Harthacnut (1040-42) there was an inferno. 

i 

*'Every tenth man was killed, the rest sold for slaves, \ 
and Alfred's eyes torn out at Ely. Harthacnut, more 
savage even than his predecessor, dug up his brother^s \ 
body and flung it into a marsh ; while a rising at Wor- 
cester against his hus-carls was punished by the bum- : 
ing of the town and the pillage of the shire." ; 

And yet it was these barbarous Northmen, now be-: 

62 j 



J 



Clontarf to the Norman Invasion 





,^^ 


Ireland £>/^ ? 


.-■ \UHDIA \. 


.1171- A^^< 


'ulsterL / 


^"^^^ ...'■••; 


TIROWEN ) i ^c\ 


/\'' 


*" . .••■ •.OALARW)IA</iJ 


(^^""^^'■'l/'^^^^ 


URIEL *. J^ 


^gTjfA ': BREIFNY^S. ^j^ 


^^CONNACHT^ 


« — ^ X 


y^ i 


MEATH N 


''^'s— ^ •: 


^^«^\ OFFALV 1 


'^ r^^^^r\J^^^ 


LEIX ■*' 1 


T \ 7/ORMOND/ 


y LEINSTER 1 


^r^' 


\OS50RY. '"""'"'"( 


^^^Wo *•••"•••••••.....•:*:• 


^■•^5^-^JS 


j^ MUNSTER 


y 


\^.y^DBSt'^OND )^<L^ 





come the Normans, who, under William the Bastard, 
Duke of Normandy, completed the conquest of England 
in 1066. 

63 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

But order, as we now conceive it, was far to seek; 
even in the France which mingled Northman with i 
Frank. "Brute force," James Harvey Robinson tells i 
us, "governed almost everything outside of the church. ^ 
The feudal obligations were not fulfilled except when', 
the lord was sufficiently powerful to enforce them. The ; 
bond of vassalage and fidelity, which was the sole prin- I 
ciple of order, was constantly broken and faith was \ 
violated by both vassal and lord. . . . 

"We may say that war, in all its forms, was the law ] 
of the feudal world. War formed the chief occupation 
of the restless aristocracy who held the land and exer- \ 
cised the governmental control. The inveterate habits \ 
of a military race, the discord provoked by ill-defined ; 
rights or by self-interest and covetousness, all led to ■ 
constant bloody struggles in which each lord had for \ 
his enemies all those about him." 

^ i 

So much for the high civilization of these days of i 
the first pendulum- clock. What is clear is that, under- i 
neath, (1) wealth was accumulating, (2) the contacts j 
of the Northmen were spreading the pollen of Byzan- \ 
tine civilization and importing certain valuable non- : 
feudal administrative principles, (3) the trading towns I 

64 1 



Clontarf to the Norman Invasion 

were growing in importance, (4) the church was becom- 
ing spiritual!}^, politically, and economically strong, 
as evidenced in the Crusades. But it was a consider- 
able period before the binding effects of a money 
economy, which enabled the expensively armed Nor- 
mans to employ Welsh and Flemish mercenaries, swung 
out in the aggressive policy of Henry II. William 
the Conqueror, son of Robert the Devil, it is true, de- 
signed to invade Ireland after he had floored the Eng- 
lish with a single blow, turned them into Norman ten- 
ants, monopolized their bishoprics and places of power, 
and bribed the Danish fleet not to attack him. But 
he was kept busy in England and France ; a state based 
on feudalism was a state based on force. Good as it 
was for England to have the master-builders and arti- 
sans of castle and cathedral, the weavers of Flanders, 
the merchants of Caen and Rouen, it was still no 
amusement for the common people to endure the fright- 
fulness of William. 

"Fugitives he sought out and put to the sword, but 
even so he was not satisfied. Innocent and guilty were 
involved in indiscriminate slaughter. Houses were 
destroyed, flocks and herds exterminated. Supplies of 
food and farm implements were heaped together and 
burned. With deliberate purpose, cruelly carried out, 

65 



The Story of the Irish Nation j 

it was made impossible for men to live through a thou-| 

i 
sand square miles. Years afterward the country wasj 

stni a desert; it was generations before it had fully I 

recovered." (G. B. Adams.) \ 

Perhaps it was better for the common English to take ; 

it lying down, but the Conquest imposed a ruling class. ; 

It stratified England econoniically in a manner which! 

the Revolution of 1688 did not eradicate, and which: 

has not yet been eradicated. The town laborer andi 

the country laborer had a long misery ahead of them] 

in Merrie England. ; 

j 

The Irish, on the other hand, had escaped the Cnuts \ 

and Harthacnuts. Not until Normandy and England] 

were better welded, and the Papacy better linked with \ 

the new imperialism, and sea-power more secure, could i 

the Normans try their arts on Ireland. When they | 

did so, however, they did it with the plea that "the j 

natives were commonly engaged in tearing the bowels j 

of their fatherland by their intestine feuds. ^' I 



3 

The church was the first Irish body to feel the pull 
of the changing world. Men like Cormac mac Culinan 

m 






Clontarf to the Norman Invasion 

of Cashel ( d. 908) , who knew Danish, Latin, Greek, and 
Hebrew as well as Gaelic, left worthy successors in 
Clonmacnois, Armagh and Monasterboice ; and the 
Irish monks of the twelfth century spread to Ratisbon, 
Wiirzburg, Nuremberg, Constanz, Vienna, Eichstadt. 
But a different story was now heard from the time when 
the monks of Lindisfarne "looked for their ecclesiastical ' 
tradition, not to Rome, but to Ireland ; and quoted for 
their guidance the instructions, not of Gregory, but of 
Columba.'* (Green.) Anselm and Lanfranc at Bee 
represent the birth of a new power in Europe. The 
power of Rome was working with and through feudal- 
ism. From St. Bernard (visited in 1139 by St. 
Malachy at Clairvaux), we find the disparaging esti- 
mate in which the ancient Irish Church is already held. 
It is "outside" and weak. Abuses in morality and 
discipline are insisted upon, but especially abuses, bar- 
barisms, which indicate its isolation and independence. 
Synods in 1158 and 1162 precede the Synod of Cashel, 
which marks the crushing subordination of the Irish 
Church to the Normans. Meanwhile, up to that feudal 
triumph, the early Irish Romanesque architecture, the 
sculpture of great crosses, the illumination of manu- 
scripts and such beautiful work as the Ardagh chalice 

67 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

and the cross of Cong, were thriving under ecclesiasti- \ 
cal influence. After the Normans the church ceased to ; 
be free, and these creative impulses dried at the source. ; 
Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster, is the J 
human link between Ireland and the Normans, but be- \ 
fore telling Dermot's story one must first glance at the { 
geography of Leinster. "The whole spirit and policy j 
of Leinster," as G. A. J. Cole so admirably explains,.; 
"were dominated by the great chain of granite, eighty 
miles in length, that served as a natural fortress, ap- i 
proached only by narrow lateral glens. The rocky j 
walls of these valleys, with their wooded clefts, pro- 
vided ambushes that told strong in defense." ("Ireland j 
the Outpost," p. 45.) This chain of Leinster moun- | 
tains, facing the southeastern approaches to Dublin i 
and the wooded plains, was to mean much in Irish his- ■ 
tory from the beginning up to 1550, or from the age 
of iron to the age of gunpowder. Unlike the chiefs of ^ 
the cow country, the Leinster chiefs could take the | 
aggressive. On the defensive they were virtually im-l 
pregnable. The military road of 1798 is a testimony J 
to the importance of holding "the barrier of Leinster." 
It is equally a testimony to the initial advantages of i 
Dermot MacMurrough in being able to force his en- \ 
emies to bite on granite. i 

68 ; 



Clontarf to the Norman Invasion 

4f 

Dermot collected enemies. The dominant man in 
Leinster, he made life unpleasant for his compatriots 
in the plains by his * 'grievous and intolerable manner." 
In 1152, during the absence of O'Ruarc of Meath, he 
eloped with the elderly Devorgilla, O'Ruarc's wife. 
This episode apparently closed with Devorgilla^s return 
to her husband, but by 1166 Dermot had become so 
detested that he was dispossessed of his territory and 
forced to leave the country. He thereupon made his 
way to Aquitaine to enlist Henry II. 

"Now Dermot was a man tall of stature and stout 
of frame; a soldier whose heart was in the fray, and 
held valiant among his own nation. From often shout- 
ing his battle-cry, his voice had become hoarse. A 
man who liked better to be feared by all than loved 
hj any," so the inimitable Gerald de Barri, who came 
to Ireland with the Normans. 

Henry, as we shall see later, had a trump up his 
sleeve in the game for Ireland, but he was not ready 
to play. Very busy, as usual, he had little time for 
Dermot. "He received him kindly and graciously 
enough," but despatched him to England, saying: "We 
have taken Dermot, Prince of the men of Leinster, into 

69 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

the bosom of our grace and good will. Wherefore, too, 
whosoever within the bounds of our dominions shall be 




willing to lend aid to him, as being our vassal and liege- 
man, in the recovery of his own, let him know that he 
hath our favor and permission to that end." 

70 



Clontarf to the Norman Invasion 

The grandiose manner was already in vogue. But 
at Bristol Dermot had to find the lads who would do 
business. He began by making a splash with Henry's 
money. He "made liberal offers both of land and 
money to many persons, but without effect." At last, 
however, he met his man. Richard FitzGilbert de 
Clare, son of Strongbow and himself called Strongbow, 
came to see the big, tough Irishman. What would Der- 
mot put up? Dermot said, my eldest daughter, Eva 
(Aoife) and succession to the kingdom! Knowing 
nothing of Irish succession, this offer tempted Strong- 
bow, but first he let a few of the lesser fellows under 
Robert FitzStephen go over in 1169 to try it out. 
And with them he took the precaution of sending his 
lanky uncle, Hervey de Montmaurice, "a man of broken 
fortunes, without equipment or money ; not so much to 
take a part in the fighting as to act as a spy for" him.; 



Landing near Wexford with SOO Welsh archers in 
May, 1169, FitzStephen and his followers promptly 
went against the Ostmen or Northmen in the walled 
town of Wexford. The Northmen repulsed them 
hardily, but on a Sunday morning sent out two bishops 
and some citizens to find out what was behind the 

71 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

attack, and, debating it with MacMurrough and his ^ 
mercenaries, decided to make terms. Donnell of Os- | 
sory was not so complacent. Retreating before the | 

heavily armed Norman leaders (Maurice de Prender- 

j 

gast, Meiler FitzHenry, Milo FitzGerald, and the rest), j 
he harried them desperately from the woods on their | 
return to camp; and although they managed to kill • 
some hundreds of Donnell's men in a flanking move- ; 
ment, Maurice de Prendergast was sufficientlj^ impressed 
to swap masters and go over to Donald of Ossory. | 

The news of the knights in full armor traveled fast, j 
The high-king, Rory (Roderic) O'Conor of Connacht, ! 
was a slow man, but he sent a messenger of peace to < 
MacMurrough in the name of "their common country ,'' 
offering to acknowledge Dermot king of Leinster. In 
response to this offer Dermot actually agreed to peace. 
He acknowledged O'Conor high-king of Ireland, gave 
his own son Conor as hostage, and secretly pledged 
himself to have no more to do with foreigners. But 
Maurice FitzGerald, then arriving at Wexford with 
two more ships of fighting men, Dermot flatly went 
back on his word, hurried to secure Dublin, sent Fitz- 
Stephen to help O'Brien of Thomond against O'Conor, 
and designed to become high-king himself. For this 
purpose he needed his Normans. To FitzStephen and 

72 



Clontarf to the Norman Invasion 

FitzGerald in turn, who in each case were so clumsy as 
to be already married, he tendered his daughter Eva, 
and to both of them, with a broad disregard for Irish 
law, he gave grants in fee. Meanwhile Strongbow had 
learned of the successes of the preliminary force. Pick- 
ing up everybody along the way to his embarkation in 
Wales, he rolled up 200 men-at-arms and 1000 archers. 
He landed near Waterford in August, 1170. The cap- 
ture of this Gael-Gall town was a bloody fight. The 
two Sitrics were killed, and Ragnal and O'Phelan spared 
for good reason. At the first moment Strongbow 
wedded Eva, who, in the most literal sense, was given 
away by her father. 

The situation was now sufficiently serious. Rory 
O'Conor was probably not alarmed by the intrusion of 
foreigners as such; that was no new story. But Der- 
mot MacMurrough had the O'Briens on his side, and 
by the evidence of every encounter these men in armor 
were proving formidable. It was known that they had 
a new military technic, had conquered England, and 
were builders of castles — ^had aeroplanes, so to speak, 
and machine-guns and tanks. A religious offensive 
was at the same time being conducted. The fact that 
Henry II had not come gave some reassurance, but by 
a rapid excursion over the mountain ridges and through 

73 



The Story of the Irish Nation I 

Glendalough Dermot MacMurrough had reached Dub- •. 
lin with a handful of Normans and rushed the walls j 
while a parley was being made. The Norsemen took | 
to their ships. O'Conor decided to act. He advanced | 
to besiege Dublin, but was caught napping in a sally , 

which, by Norman accounts, was quite one-sided: | 

\ 
At prime we numbered of the kerne 

Full fifteen hundred dead; :'■ 

While stricken of our Engiishrie I 

A single footman bled. 

It was a most threatening invasion. Ireland, in the ; 
language of the Four Masters, was "a trembling sod." ; 
But the very fact of this first success aroused Henry II \ 
to anger. He knew his compatriots and wanted no j 
rivals. He was furious when Strongbow's uncle Hervey j 
came to him in Gloucester. Hervey pledged fealty; i 
gave him Dublin and Waterford and Wexford and the 1 
castles, and made him sole legatee of Ireland. This j 
placated the full-blooded Henry, but he still vibrated, i 
Ever since 1155 he had planned to devolve Ireland on I 
some member of his house and in that year he had se- '■ 
cured his trump card from Nicholas Breakspear, Pope j 
Adrian — the only English pope. This was the needful \ 
moral window-dressing which was the beginning of Eng- j 
lish foreign policy. It was the papal "buU'^ called i 
*'Laudabiliter." It laid down that the Irish were an j 

74 ' 



Clontarf to the Norman Invasion 

"unlearned and savage race." It also laid down that 
Henry was full of enthusiasm for religion, in love with 
the creed, and desirous "to instruct the Irish nation in 
the ways of virtue." In the most eloquent phrases, 
worthy of their sacred cause, Henry was despatched 
to check crime, correct immorality, engraft virtue, and 
glorify the religion of Christ — to which end the Irish 
people "shall receive you with fitting honor and do 
homage to you as their overlord." This in 1155. 

But 1170 was not a happy year for Henry IPs flour- 
ishing the "Laudabiliter." It was the year of the mur- 
der of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, by 
Henry's over-enthusiastic friends. Still angry, he as- 
sembled 400 ships, 500 knights, 4000 men-at-arms, and 
several thousand archers and sailed for Waterford. 
He reached there October, 1171. He imprisoned Fitz- 
Stephen and scowled generally. "The island was now 
tranquil," says Gerald de Barri, "in the presence of 
the king, and enjoyed the blessings of peace and rest." 
MacMurrough and his friends submitted to him. From 
beyond the Shannon Roderic said "the whole of Ireland 
was rightly his," and not until 1175 did he conclude a 
treaty. This he did in the Treaty of Windsor, which, 
as G. B. Adams says, Henry II paid no attention to 
"any longer than suited his purpose." 

75 



The Story of the Irish Nation j 

Meanwhile, on his visit to Ireland, the "Laudabiliter'* ] 
was not so much mentioned. He had still to answer : 
for Becket. A synod of the clergy met at Cashel, pre- i 
sided over by the Papal Legate Christian. It was a ; 
mild synod. It ordained that children should be bap- \ 
tized in water, not milk; that tithes be paid to the j 
churches; that marriages be solemnized; that church ; 

lands be exempt from imposts ; that the clergy be ex- \ 

j 

empt from the ^'eric"; that wills be made in due form I 
and burials with due obsequies ; and, the real point, that ^ 
the usages of the Irish Church should conform to the , 
Anglican. Thus the "unlearned and savage race" was ; 
to be redeemed. Henry went on to Dublin, named him- j 
self "Lord of Ireland," chartered Dublin to Bristol, ' 
feudalized the Pale, held court from November to j 
Easter Monday, and left to answer for the murder of ' 
Becket before he had ringed the Dublin district with i 
castles. He did not depart until he saw to it that in | 
future Ireland should have none but Norman arch- \ 
bishops. ' 



Now, what were the ideas of the Norman invaders 
and what manner of men were they? 

Their ideas, we may take it, varied with their dis- 

76 



Clontarf to the Norman Invasion 

positions, but on the whole were simple. They were 
strong, strong-smelling, hard-fighting, extremely defi- 
nite, and hard-headed petty barons, ready to call Henry 
their overlord if they must, but looking on Ireland as 
a good thing and their own. They worked under Der- 
mot, to begin with, but they felt the superiority that 
men encased in hardware always feel for opponents 
who have less hardware. Being Normans, however, 
they equally despised their English mercenaries, whose 
speech they could not understand, and their Welsh con- 
scripts, who were valued merely for their nimbleness 
and their archery. "Our men in Ireland," wrote de 
Barri concerning the second instalment in 1185, "fell 
into three distinct divisions — the Normans, the Eng- 
lish, and my own countrymen [the Welsh, who were 
very numerous]. We of the court came mostly in 
contact with the first; we had few dealings with the 
second, with the last none." 

They nominally formed a close ring of feudal con- 
federates, "thirsting for plunder and renown," but 
inside that ring there was intense animosity and com- 
bativeness. One has only to turn to the chronicle of 
the Rev. Gerald de Barri (related to the FitzHenrys 
and the FitzGeralds and the FitzStephens) to gather 
the fear, hatred, and rivalry which seethed within this 

77 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

grasping enterprise. The outcome was not to be won- 
dered at. 

In history written under the influence and direction 
of Norman ascendancy a great deal is made of "con- 
stitutional liberties," starting with eulogies of Magna 
Charta (1215). But this is against the genius of 
history, which, unlike literature, is perverted by the 
romantic spirit. Magna Charta was chiefly an in- 
cident in the struggle between crown and baron. It 
was "a baronial manifesto, seeking chiefly to redress 
the grievances of the promoters, and mainly selfish in 
motive." (McKechnie.) In Ireland such "bulwarks 
of liberty" could not be erected by the scrambling 
barons. For four hundred years their occupation was 
precarious and dwindling. The main purpose of legis- 
lation in Ireland during this period did not touch the 
Irish, who, though "occupied," were independent. It 
strove in a futile way to keep the Norman occupiers 
in line. It was not until the wealthier country tem- 
porarily settled its own disorders and came to Ireland 
with gunpowder that the English path was blasted 
through the Irish nation. 

8 

The chief actors in this drama we have from Gerald 
de Barri: Strongbow, "a man with reddish hair and 

78 



Clontarf to the Norman Invasion 

freckled face, bright gray eyes, delicate, even feminine 
features, a high voice and a short neck," seems to have 
been the bottle-shouldered type of aristocrat, "rather 
a tactician than a fighting man." "A man whose fam- 
ily was better than his fortune; who had more blue 
blood than brains, and whose pedigree was longer than 
his purse," he was of little importance, dying in 1176. 
He was, in any case, no match for Henry H, the Roose- 
velt of his time, "a man with reddish hair, a big bullet- 
head, bloodshot gray eyes which in anger flashed 
fiercely, a fiery face, and a broken voice. He had a 
bull-neck, a square chest, muscular arms, and a fleshy 
body. . . . He was attached beyond measure to the pleas- 
ures of the chase. . . . He was by nature not a truthful 
man, and would habitually break his word without the 
slightest excuse. . . . Scarcely could he spare an hour 
to attend the holy sacrifice of the mass, and even then 
so great, forsooth, was the press of public business 
that he spent more time in discussion and conversation 
than in prayer." 

Maurice FitzGerald, related to de Barri, was an 
unassuming, dignified man, "his features regular, his 
complexion embrowned by exposure ; of medium height." 
Reimund FitzGerald "was a man not much above middle 
height, but very stout. He had rather curly yellow 

79 



The Story of the Irish Nation j 

hair, large round gray eyes, a somewhat high nose, and ! 

a sunburnt face of bright and cheerful expression, i 

Although corpulent, the natural vivacity of his tern- \ 

perament seemed to carry off his bulky appearance. ! 

• . . Patient in trying circumstances, the extremes of j 

heat and cold he bore with equal fortitude, and no toil \ 

i 
drew from him a murmur." Meiler FitzHenry, not a ; 

relative, "was a swarthy man with fierce black eyes 
and a keen visage. Below the middle height, yet very : 
powerful . » . intense his thirst for fame." Hervey de 
Montmaurice, not a relative, "a tall man with promi- 
nent eyes, crafty, plausible and false." John de Courci ; 
**was a tall, fair man, with big-boned, muscular limbs, j 
large of frame and powerfully built. He had great ; 
personal strength and his intrepidity was remarkable | 

. . . he kept the country under by building castles in i 

i 

advantageous positions throughout the whole of ; 
Ulster." I 

*'FitzStephen was a well-favored man of burly make ; 
and sound and vigorous health; in stature slightly , 
above the middle height. A free liver and open-handed, \ 
he had a hearty way with him; in short was a right j 
good fellow, but given overmuch to wine and women.*^ ' 

Hugh de Laci was "a swarthy man with small, black, 

deeply sunken eyes, a flat nose, and his right cheek dis- 

80 



Clontarf to the Norman Invasion 

figured down to the chin by an ugly scar caused by some 
accidental bum; a man with a short neck and a hairy 
and muscular body, though small and ill-made. With 
all this, however, he had considerable strength of char- 
acter and resolution, and for temperance was a very 
Frenchman. He was a careful man in his private 
affairs, and when in office most vigilant in the discharge 
of pubhc business.'' 

These were not English Picts, then. They began to 
run the "English-speaking world" without a word of 
English. They were the cool, military blond type that 
still persists, and the dark French type, energetic and 
systematic, with which we are familiar. They had two 
rules — to build castles and hold land in fief — and they 
gave no more to the church than they could help, except 
the verbose and jocular Hervey, who gave himself. 

9 

Through the eyes of these confident, practical, and 
class-conscious adventurers the conquest of Ireland 
looked easy. For their part, the Irish chiefs were 
frankly set back by these intruders, especially by the 
speed with which the archers shot and "the might of 
the heavy men-at-arms." But these novelties wore off. 
*'By gradual and careful training in the use of the bow 

81 



The Story of the Irish Nation - 

and other weapons," de Barri admits in a few years, \ 
"by learning caution and studying the art of ambush, ' 
by the confidence gained from frequently engaging in ; 
conflict with our troops, lastly taught by our very i 
successes, these Irishmen, whom at first we could rout | 
with ease, became able to offer a stout resistance." \ 
This in 1185. And he adds solemnly, "a campaign in i 
France is a very different thing from a campaign in i 
Ireland or Wales. In the former case it is carried on \ 
in an open country, in the latter in broken country; 
there we have plains, here woods; there armor is held ; 
in esteem, here it is reckoned cumbersome and out of \ 
place; there victory is won by weight, here by activity." ; 
3^he Irish proved to be exceedingly active. The coun- 
try, said de Barri, "should be thickly sown with castles \ 
and so strengthened and protected." Connacht, too • 
hard to conquer, too poor to plunder, must pay a trib- \ 
ute, but Limerick must be held. "It were better, far j 
better, at first to set up our strongholds by degrees in i 
suitable places, and to carry out a coherent system 
of castle building, feeling the way, so to speak, at every \ 
step." This was the method of bringing Ireland to 
Christ and "engrafting virtue." At the same time a I 
public edict "should, as among the Sicilians, forbid on | 
pain of the severest penalty all bearing of arms.' 

8^ 



j» 



Clontarf to the Norman Invasion 

10 

With the Normans, it is evident, the spirit was will- 
ing, but the flesh was weak. From the twelfth to the 
sixteenth century Gerald's outspoken plan interpreted 
the mind behind the Irish invasion as clearly as von 
Bissing's outspoken plan interpreted the mind behind 
the recent Belgian invasion. But it was one thing to 
talk conquest, another thing to accomplish it. A light 
but flexible mesh of national custom, national person- 
ality, and national will fell upon and enwrapped the 
struggling Normans until, in the sixteenth century, 
their rulers saw that this creative and spiritual essence 
must be destroyed in order to subdue Ireland. The 
lesson of the earlier period, however, is the insufficiency 
of their means rather than the uncertainty of their 
end. From the start they meant that Ireland should 
follow England's example — go to work submissively for 
the ennobled and privileged feudal Englishman. 



83 



CHAPTER IV 



NORMAN INVASION TO HENRY VHI 



WITH its language, its land system, its art and \ 
music and literature, its church and its dynas- ; 
tic succession, Ireland was a nation when it came within ! 
the sphere of Norman arms. In resisting Norman 
arms and the lordship of England it was, for four J 
hundred years, increasingly successful. But the price i 
of resistance was exorbitant. Even if Ireland kept it ; 
so hot that the Normans stood from one uneasy foot j 
to the other, changing deputy after deputy and gen- \ 
eral after general, the vitality of Ireland was enslaved 
to this single task of dealing with an invader. 

To Gaelicize the new-comers was the involuntary \ 

instinct of the nation, which had within itself the power \ 

i 
of all healthy organisms to turn what it consumes into \ 

the stream of its blood. But the Norman process dis- ! 

tracted Ireland between resisting and assimilating, and ' 

did not give the Irish nation a chance. ; 

84 J 



Norman Invasion to Henry VIII 

No sooner was a generation of Norman intruders 
converted into "Irish rebels," people who could live on 
human terms with the "Irish enemy," than there came 
a new batch of prelates, adventurers, broken men, am- 
bitious youngsters, and gentlemen of the royal blood 
who believed they could saddle Ireland. They could 
not saddle Ireland because Ireland was a nation and a 
personality. But this fact was not clear even to the 
Irishmen of the time. Many of the chiefs contradicted 
their true position. They sought one modus vivendi 
after another, responding to the twist of circumstance. 
It seemed best, one year, to throw out the Norman. 
At another time, in different political weather, it seemed 
best to win him over. Whichever side of the dilemma 
the Irish agreed to take, if they did agree, one thing 
was certain, their whole natural development was being 
sacrificed. 

"Now began," says Dr. Douglas Hyde, "that perma- 
nent war — very different, indeed, from what the Irish 
tribes waged among themselves — which, almost from 
its very commencement, thoroughly arrested Irish de~ 
•velopment, and disintegrated Irish life" The italics 
are Dr. Hyde's. "It is not too much to say that for 
three centuries after the Norman Conquest Ireland pro- 
duced nothing in art, literature, or scholarship, even 

85 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

faintly comparable to what she had achieved before." i 

"For four centuries after the Anglo-Norman, or more ; 

properly the Cambro-Norman invasion, the literature j 

of Ireland seems to have been chiefly confined to the \ 

schools of the bards, and the bards themselves seem 

to have continued on the rather cut-and-dry lines of i 

tribal genealogy, religious meditations, personal eulo- \ 

gism, clan history, and elegies for the dead. There I 

reigns during this period a lack of imagination and of ' 

initiative in literature; no new ground is broken, no I 

fresh paths entered on, no new saga-stufF unearthed, ; 

no new meters discovered. . , .'* \ 

For his part in the death of Thomas Becket, Henry ; 

II did penance. Head bowed and barefooted, he Walked ; 

his humble way to the tomb. He kissed the spot where \ 

Thomas bled, he confessed to the bishops and lay flat ; 

on the ground weeping and praying; stripped to his j 

shirt, he bent his head and shoulders while the clergy i 

flayed him, five blows from each prelate and three from : 

each monk. This for one victim, behind whom the \ 

church stood in grim power. But for Ireland, whose \ 

body was broken and spat upon by another group of ; 

i 
his liegemen, he neither wept nor prayed. . . , Men i 

amuse themselves with tears for single crimes, while they '\ 



Norman Invasion to Henry VIII 

invade millions, spread famine and disaster, and bring' 
civilizations to the dust. 

Henry II, an English chronicler puts it, "was the 
first monarch to drive from their lands the loathsome 
Irish tribes, and to allot the conquered territory to 
Englishmen on feudal terms." It was indeed feudal- 
ism, as this man saw, that laid the ax to the root of 
Irish life. Feudalism came not simply to dispossess 
the chief for a landlord and to change the inheritance 
of the whole family group into the heritage of the 
eldest son; it came also to contradict the political 
system by which the people themselves elected the head 
of their territory. In England, after all, the Normans 
came in at the top without destroying the social foun- 
dations of every Saxon tenant. But in Ireland the 
chiefs were dispossessed, and when they were dispos- 
sessed the whole Irish population found itself out- 
lawed. 

However the purple cloaks and flowing locks, the 
easy horsemanship and free gait of the Irish chiefs 
might seem to the courtier Normans, these chiefs, with 
their brehons and bards, were at the head of a systeia 

87 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

which was the only one the Irish as yet desired. Theirs i 
was a pleasant land with a way of life that suited a j 
frugal, hardy, outdoor people. Their festivals and | 
games, their passion for education, their enjoyment i 
of poetry and music, pointed to a likelihood that Erinn ! 
in its own manner would move with the rest of Europe ! 
into the sunlight of the Renaissance. But a savage \ 
feudalism fell on Ireland and held it in a murderous, \ 
brainless deadlock. From that deadlock Ireland al- 
most succeeded in extricating itself. You watch Ire- ; 
land in that long fight, free to escape time and again ; 
and yet itself so murderous and brainless in the evil 
excitement of fighting that it could not even see the ] 

open door and the waiting road. When the O'Neills I 

i 

saw that Ireland must move or be destroyed, it was \ 
too late. I 

At first the conquest looked simple. On the one 
hand you had the Norman invaders superior in the art ; 
of war, frankly assured in morale, entrenched in their ''■. 
"legal" status (except in Connacht and parts of Ulster), ! 
and associated with a powerful monarch. On the j 
other hand you had the invaded Irish making prompt 
submissions to Henry II as overlord, brave and adroit 
in fighting but not soldiers by profession, inferior in ; 
equipment, divided and subdivided in their social sys- I 

88 j 



Norman Invasion to Henry VIII 

tern and absolutely alone in the world, except possibly 
for Rome. 

Easy as it looked, success was illusive. The seeds 
of tragedy and failure were in the enterprise from the 
beginning, and there were plenty of swords to reap 
them. 

S 

To get an idea of the first Norman settlements you 
may imagine a horizontal air-line about five hundred 
feet in the air. Below that air-line, in the plains of 
Meath and Leinster and Munster, the Normans hope 
to claim everything. Above that air-line, in the moun- 
tains of Leinster and Munster, they hope to keep the 
outlawed Irishmen. Their plan is to hold all the walled 
towns on the coast — Carrickfergus, Dublin, Wexford, 
Waterford, Cork, and Limerick — and to pepper the 
plains with impregnable stone castles ; then go on brave 
excursions into Connacht, up to Ulster, to complete 
the symmetry of conquest. 

The "wild Irish,'' of course, are to stay in the bogs 
and the hills, watching Piers the Plowman, just over 
from England, as he whistles at his work in the fruitful 
fields. 

If the Irish were "wild," this was calculated to make 

89 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

them more wild. The prompt outcome was a series of 
unfortunate incidents. A young Irishman with an ax 
in his hand stood by the governor de Lacy when de Lacy 
stooped to mark out the spot for a new castle, and it 
was too much for the youth — one blow was enough. 
The Normans then tried to outlaw the ax. 

On Easter Monday, 1209, the citizens of Dublin, 
five hundred in number, all loyal and not long imported 
from Bristol, thought they M have a picnic out in the 
enemy country, two miles out. It was too much for 
the O'Bymes. Before the benefits of Norman civiliza- 
tion they had held that territory. Now they lived with 
the goshawks and the crows. The O'Byrnes massacred 
the picnic-party. 

It began to be clear that there might be a certain 
amount of ill-feeling generated by the conquest. Prince 
John came over, and the Irish chiefs were asked to a 
fresh party in Dubhn. They came, and many young 
Normans with Prince John. Being witty and well- 
bred, they pulled the chieftains' long hair and their 
cloaks, and they tried to trip them. The Irish, being 
unaccustomed to Norman civilization, went home feel- 
ing that the bond between the French and Gaelic-speak- 
ing peoples was not yet secure. 

90 



Norman Invasion to Henry VIII 



It is idle to follow the process, especially through the 
mists of intervening hypocrisy. The Irish were "bar- 
barians," yet de Clare had married Eva MacMurrough 
and de Lacy married Rose O'Conor and de Burgh mar- 
ried the daughter of de Lacy. In the fighting the 
Irish steadily improved. But a profound rottenness 
crept into their life. Here were the Normans with a 
feudal parliament at Dublin but the country was 
too upset, too dangerous, for them to attend. And 
here were the Irish without any chance to work out 
their own central government. The effect on both 
groups was precisely the same; they split into separate 
units which sought combinations of any and every kind 
for profit. What made it indescribably bad, from the 
Irish point of view, was the double choice that con- 
fronted every Irish chief; when it suited his interests 
he could elect to act feudally and favor his elder son, 
and when it suited him he could favor the tanist or 
second-chief chosen by his kinsmen. The temptation 
to play both games ripped Irish tribal integrity to 
pieces. The O'Neills, the O'Donnells, the O^Briens, 
especially the O'Conors, engaged in the fiercest and 

91 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

most complicated feuds. There were murders, battles, 
violations of sanctuary, and cold-blooded massacres. 
The Normans were not one atom different. De Berm- 
ingham who beat Bruce in 1315 was killed by two 
hundred English tenants in 13S9. Edmund and Ulick 
Burke stole a march on their girl cousin, became Irish 
chiefs, took Irish names (macWilliam), and divided 
her estates. The Desmonds, the Geraldines, the de 
Lacys, the Butlers, the Berminghams emulated the 
O'Carrolls, O'Dempseys, O'Reillys, O'Kellys, O'Bymes, 
O'Tooles, macMurroughs, macMahons, in the blood- 
thirsty ferocity and political meaninglessness of their 
quarrels. The moral level of this activity was high 
as regards courage but low as regards purpose^ In 
most of it one searches in vain for any trace of what 
we now call public spirit. 



In the thirteenth century there was one brave effort 
to do the work of Ireland. O'Brien of Thomond saw 
that a combination with the North could alone help Ire- 
land. Rising above his own claims to the kingship, he 
traveled the Erne in 1258 with his principal kinsmen 
and sub-chiefs, and there he and Hugh O'Conor agreed 
on naming Brian O'Neill king of Ireland. In 1260 

92 



Norman Invasion to Henry VIII 

O'Neill made war but was defeated and slain by the 
Earl of Salisbury at Downpatrick. The will of Ire- 
land, however, was at work. In 1263 an approach was 
made to Hakon of Norway, to offer him the kingship. 
From then till 1315, with men from the Hebrides land- 
ing to fight by the side of the Gael, the Irish warred 
with the Norman through Ulster, Meath, and Con- 
nacht. By that time Robert Bruce had fought Ban- 
nockbum. Himself declining the sovereignty of Ire- 
land, his brother Edward accepted the crown and 
landed in Antrim with 6000 Scots. In 1317, the year 
Robert Bruce came to fight to free Ireland, Brian 
O'NeilPs son wrote a spirited letter denouncing the 
invasion to Pope John XXII. But where the pope 
had deferred to the victor of Bannockbum he reproved 
and threatened the Irish. In 1317 the friar preachers 
and mendicants were ordered by papal mandate "to 
desist from stirring up the people of Ireland to resist 
the king's authority." 

Edward Bruce failed. At first he swept the country, 
but his second year was wasted. At Athenry his ally 
O'Conor was slain with 8000 men. He himself won 
every battle except his last. He defeated 30,000 at 
Athy and 15,000 at Kells. Besieging Dublin unsuc- 
cessfully and too late, however, he stood in the third 

93 



The Story of the Irish Nation | 

\ 
year against a huge combined army, and, at Faughart, 

near Dundalk (where he had been crowned), he lost ! 

his life and Ireland. \ 

These campaigns drained Ireland. Their effect was | 

recorded in bitter reproaches to the dead Bruce, who I 

had left a desolation, famine, and pestilence that was I 

soon deepened by the Black Death. Friar John Clyn ! 

of the Kilkenny Franciscans says in 1348 that "pesti- \ 

lence deprived of human inhabitants villages and cities, j 

and castles and towns, so that there was scarcely found ; 

a man to dwell therein." But it was the Normans and 

English more than the Irish who suffered. The great 

policy by which the mysteries or guilds were made ex- : 

clusively English and by which the towns were planted 

"to treat with the Irish enemy and reform them, also ] 

to make war on them," could not stand the depletions j 

of the plague. 

6 \ 

The dykes of the colonists began to give way before 
the Irish race and the Irish language, and for two cen- : 
turies to follow there was an increasing Irish resur- \ 
gence, up to the rampart of the Pale. Mrs. Alice Stop- : 
ford Green has shown in scrupulous detail the part I 
that Ireland took in medieval commerce and industry, j 

94 



Norman Invasion to Henry VIII 

She has listed the names of Irishmen who went to Ox- 
ford, until the Pale decreed that "no Irishman adher- 
ing to the enemies shall be suffered henceforth to pass 
over the sea, by color of going to the schools of Ox- 
ford, Cambridge, or elsewhere." Already Irishmen 
were "on the run." But this did not prevent their 
taking a share of the markets that were opening all 
over Europe. In "The Making of Ireland and its 
Undoing, 1200-1600," Mrs. Green has given the sur- 
prising evidences of Irish commerce, from the great oak 
beams that went to support the roof of Westminster 
Hall in 1200 to the oaks that went to the Dutch Stadt- 
haus at Amsterdam in 1700. Ireland traded with 
England, France, Spain, Holland, Flanders, Florence, 
Naples, Genoa. Out from Ireland were sent fine 
leather, Irish cloaks, cloth and linen, gloves, baskets, 
shoes, hemp and flax, cheese, butter and honey. Em- 
broidered silk, fine serge, ware of Irish and Spanish 
iron — these went with salmon and herring, with com, 
with meat and wool. Gold came in, "with coal and 
fruit and wine, carpets, broadcloths and kerseys, 
velvet and silk, satin and cloth of gold and em- 
broideries." And small Irish ships manned by Irishmen 
thronged Galway, Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Wex- 
ford, Dublin, and Drogheda. Ardglass, Trim, Youg- 

95 



The Story of the Irish Nation I 

[i 
hal, and Kinsale were also ports, with Ross and Kil- ' 

kenny as trading towns. j 

To keep the Irish out of Irish towns was the first | 

rule of what now begins to be English imperial policy, j 

"No Irishman nor any man with a beard above his i 

mouth was to be lodged within Dublin walls, nor hisj 

horse nor his horse-boy.'' Such severe prohibitions,! 

however, were not operative in a country where the] 

Irish were like the moisture in the air. Who were to be i 

"priests, doctors, clerks, nurses, messengers, harpers,) 

porters, millers, bakers, shoemakers, butchers".? The' 

decline of Anglo-Norman fortunes drew into Dublin; 

*'0'Byrnes, O'Tooles, Ryans, O'Heyns, Hanlons, Der- 

mots, Kavanaghs, Connors, Coynes, Flanagans, Con-i 

nells." It was impossible to hold "the rallying city 

for men of the 'better race.' " 

But while the unfree classes in Ireland had no share 

in the class revolts of John Ball and Wat Tyler, there; 

was a temporary promise of relief from invasion. "Our i 

Irish dominions," cried King Edward in 1361, "have 

been reduced to such utter devastation, ruin, and mis-| 

ery that they may be totally lost if our subjects there 

are not immediately succored." This was the period! 

of the Statute of Kilkenny — which, by the way, wasi 

written in French, still the language of the aristocracy 

96 I 



Norman Invasion to Henry VIII 

and the law. The case was so bad that the crown had 
to make a demonstration. It made a huge one. In 
1394 Richard II arrived (at Waterford, as usual) with 
an army of 34,000 to engraft more virtue on the 
wild and barbarous Irish. 

A different macMurrough from Dermot the For- 
eigner was now king of Leinster. From 1377 to 1417 
Art macMurrough was the goad of the English. Work- 
ing with the O'Byrnes. O'Tooles, and O'Nolans, he 
showed the offense-power of the "mounteine enemie.'* 
He mauled Richard's troops on the way to Dublin, 
having blocked their passage by the east. The ruse 
which de Bermingham had worked with the Offaly 
family in 1305, when twenty-nine nobles were murdered 
at a banquet in his castle, was later tried in Dublin 
Castle on macMurrough. But as armed men stealthily 
surrounded that feasting-place of death, the unsuspect- 
ing macMurrough caught his battle-song played in 
earnest by a watchful harper, his only attendant ; "he 
made his escape despite of them, by the strength of his 
hand and bravery, and they were not able to subdue 
him." This was the end of the knighthood that Richard 
had given to macMurrough as well as O'Conor, O'Brien, 
and O'Nem. 

At Kells, in 1398, King Richard's deputy, Mortimer, 

97 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

was defeated and slain. In revenge thereof Richard \ 
returned with 20,000 men in 1399. Only by luck did \ 
he arrive at Dublin with his force partly intact. The ; 
O'Byrnes were beaten at Bray, with heavy losses, in \ 
the following year. But Art macMurrough persisted. ' 
He dominated Leinster. Wexford, Carlow, Kildare, 
he scavenged of his enemy, and held his own till he ; 
died at sixty, 1417. -| 



This was an age, however, in which the primitive 
and desperate process of armed raids and sallies was i 
not enough to liberate Ireland. To carve Dublin Castle ') 
out of Ireland's side was necessary ; but macMurrough ; 
opened that wound without extracting the spear-head. | 
Meanwhile great developments were taking place on \ 
the Continent and even in England. The names of \ 
Petrarch and Boccaccio spring to mind at this period ; i 
and if French feudalism was sprawling in the mud of 
Agincourt like a crustacean on its back, with Henry 
V's murderers finishing it, and if John Huss was burned 
alive in 1415 as Joan of Arc was burned alive in 1430, 
the spring of Europe was in blossom. Life surged in 
the medieval towns and hope in the rediscovery of work- 
manship. France devised a military system that ended 

98 



Norman Invasion to Henry VIII 

"chivalry" and prepared the state for the terrible uses 
of gunpowder. The Hundred Years' War concluded 
in 1453, the English retreating from France to enter 
on the miserable wrangle of the Wars of the Roses. 
It was, on the Continent, the beginning of the Renais- 
sance, a movement that released the energies of man 
and allowed him to satisfy his most varied and colored 
desires. Copernicus, Cabot, and Columbus were names 
on the horizon. A race of subject human beings, 
mute and grimy, still hung on the side-lines of this 
vivid human procession toward knowledge and culture ; 
only the center of the social stream flowed gleamingly 
in the sun. But everywhere the break-up of feudalism 
was the end of an enslavement to the battle-ax. The 
New Learning was almost within man's grasp, to lift 
him out of barbarism into a reason which meant that 
life was to be valued, glorified, sweetened, and refined. 
The church, so far the custodian of the higher values, 
was enough in league with feudalism to become the 
object of contention and revision. Men who had new 
values, men who craved emancipation, tried their 
strength against Rome. In some cases tolerance and 
reason were most in mind, and the rights of man; in 
other cases a mere change of masters and formulae. 
But in any case the world turned on a new axis. 

99 



The Story of the Irish Nation j 

I 
8 \ 

i 
For tills renaissance (a Continental word) England 

was not yet ready ; and Ireland, dragging in the i 

troubled wake of England, was permitted no natural : 

evolution. Poyning's law, passed in 1394, gives the; 

best indication of the tiny extent to which "constitu-1 

tional liberties" had penetrated to Ireland. So un-; 

certain was the English crown of its feudal barons in- 

Ireland that the exclusively Anglo-Norman parliament i 

of Dublin was led by a strong deputy into agreeing that ; 

no bill should even be presented in Ireland until it had^ 

been submitted for approval to the English crown.: 

This was intended to offset and hold down the Gerald-; 

ines. The Geraldines (FitzGeralds of Kildare andj 

Munster) had by now begun to show their sea-change,; 

after four generations of Ireland. They were no longer \ 

Normans but Norman-Irish, speaking French, English, '. 

Irish, and Latin, and bidding fair to become the realj 

lords of the realm. Set against the prudent Ormondes i 

(Butlers by name and often butlers by temperament) ] 

these FitzGeralds rose on their manifold compromise] 

between feudalism and the Irish land system, whilej 

the Irish chiefs marked time and collected "black rent." j 

The FitzGeralds grew in strength and in national 

100 



Norman Invasion to Henry VIII 

favor until, with skill and luck, thej came within sight 
of dominating Ireland. The degree to which the union 
of Irish and Anglo-Irish had proceeded may be guessed 
from these alliances: "A daughter of the seventh Earl 
of Kildare married Henry O'Neill, Prince of Tyrowen. 
Of the daughters of the eighth earl, Alice was married 
to her first cousin, Con O'Neill, Eleanor to MacCarthy 
Reagh and afterwards to Manus O'Donnell, Margaret 
to the eighth Earl of Ormond, and Eustacia to Mac- 
William Nachter. Mary, daughter of the ninth earl, 
was married to Brian O'Conor, chief of Offaly, and her 
sister Ellen to Fergananim O'CarroU of Ely.'^ Here 
was a mighty union of Irish and Anglo-Irish against 
the crown, after four hundred years of conquest. But 
statecraft set a trap, and youth fell into it. The 
downfall of the Geraldines was black as the pit. 

9 

To English history belongs the Geraldines' espousal 
of the Yorkish pretenders, and the picture of Ormonde's 
faction and the Geraldines brawling in St. Patrick's 
Cathedral, It is enough to know that Ormonde "put 
a great stay" on Geraldine and Geraldine on Ormonde. 

But with Garrett Mor (Gerald), the Great Earl of 
Kildare, there comes a vigorous and defiant personality. 

101 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

He died in 1513, "a mighty made man, full of honor 
and courage.'* He was the earl of whom it was said, 
"All Ireland cannot rule this man." *'Then," said 
Henry VII, "this man shall rule all Ireland!" To 
succeed him came Garrett Oge (Gerald the Younger), 
again the governor of Ireland. Garrett was a man 
who saw aid for Ireland in Spain and France. At a 
time when the Pale was narrowed to a swathe of Louth, 
Meath, Kildare, and Dublin, he was a power in the land. 
At Maynooth, his castle, there was artillery that should 
have been in Dublin. In spite of his culture (he had 
a library, large for the time, in which twenty Irish 
books are recorded, twenty-two English, thirty-four 
Latin, and thirty-six French), he sneered like a fron- 
tiersman in his conflict with the sumptuous Wolsey. 
"I would you and I had exchanged kingdoms but for 
one month. I could trust to gather up more crumbs in 
that space than twice the revenues of my poor earldom. 
I sleep in a cabin when you lie soft in your bed of 
down. I serve under the cope of heaven, when you 
are served under a canopy, I drink water out of a skull, 
when you drink out of golden cups." 

Lord deputy by his very courage, he was called to 
London in 1534 to answer to Henry VIII for treason, 

102 



Norman Invasion to Henry VIII 

and this time he was clamped in the Tower. While he 
was there word was sent back to Ireland that Henry had 
executed him. The report traveled to his son, Silken 
Thomas, a handsome youth left as deputy by his 
father: his gorgeous trappings gave him his name. 

The young man wanted no more of Tudor fealty. 
He rode through Dublin with his harper and a troop of 
horse. On the north of the Liffey he made his way 
to St. Mary's Abbey where the king's council was sit- 
ting. There he flung his sword of state among them. 

"Now I have need of my own sword," he said, "I am 
none of Henry's deputy. I am his foe." 

His elders trembled for him. "I will not hold him for 
my king," the youth cried. "If it be my hap to mis- 
carry . . . catch that catch may. I will take the 
market as it riseth." 

Galloping off after this defiance, Silken Thomas 
began a campaign which enlisted the O'Tooles, mac- 
Murroughs, O'Conors, O'Moores, O'Briens, O'Carrolls, 
O'Neills. He had enough success to enable him to 
control the Pale and to take the Castle. But there 
was no heart in the rising, and much dissension The 
archbishop of Dublin being murdered by his followers, 
Lord Thomas was promptly condemned by the church; 

103 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

and Henry VIII sent over Skeffington the Gunner. 

With the aid of artillery, SkefEngton captured May- 
nooth; thereupon he executed the garrison. One after 
another the six Geraldine fortresses were assaulted and 
taken. A promise of pardon was indubitably given to 
Lord Thomas (now Earl of Kildare since his father 
had died in the Tower). He and his five uncles were 
brought prisoners to London. There they were held 
for more than a year, in mean neglect and misery, the 
gallant youth now barefoot and in rags. The delay 
was designed to cool off feeling. In 1537 the six 
Geraldines were "drawne, hanged, and quartered at 
Tiburne," and their heads set on six spikes on London 
Bridge. 

Antagonists though they were, the ruin of the Ger- 
aldines was terrible enough to win the tears of Ormonde. 
No Anglo-Irish family was to take their place, or to 
weld Ireland under an outside leader. But a young 
boy, the last of the Geraldines, was hurried by his 
aunt from the reach of the English. She brought him 
safely to Donegal. Then, in the saffron shirt of a 
peasant, he was shipped to France. The English 
Government learned he was in Paris and demanded him. 
Again he escaped, eventually to Rome, to appear in 
middle age on the Irish scene. 

104 



Norman Invasion to Henry VIII 

10 

It has spirit, this recovery from the Norman in- 
vasion, but one thinks of that Irish priest, Shemus 
Cartan, in his exile in France, writing these manly lines 
in Gaelic, translated by Lady Gregory : 

Let us put down the sum of our sins; 
Oppression of the poor, thieving, robbery, 
Great vows held in light esteem; 
Giving our soul to the man that is the worst; 
The strength of our pride was greater than our life, 
The strength of our debts was more than we could pay. 

It was with treachery Ireland was lost. 
And the ill-will of men one to another. 
There was no judge that would give a hearing 
To the oppressed people whose life was under hardship. 
Outcasts and widows crying aloud 
Without right judgment to be had or punishment. 

We were never agreed together, 
But as one ox bound and one free from the yoke; 
No right humility to be found. 
All trying for the headship of Ireland 
At the time when her enemies were doing their work. 
No settlement to be made of any quarrel. 

The share of the wheat-ear for the man that was the strongest; 
It is long that this has been the hurt of Ireland; 
It is thus that the battle ended with the Gael. 

The battle had not "ended with the Gael.'' It had 
only begun. But the age of the swash-buckler was 
over. Now came a period in which feudalism gave 
place to absolute monarchy. Ireland had to meet the 
policy of conquest which was dictated by Tudor fears, 
Stuart cowardice, and the godly brutahty of Puritan- 
ism. 

105 



CHAPTER V I 

THE CONQUEST -l 

1 I 

THE Irish question was now three hundred and fifty j 
years old. Without the existence or aid of a 
single Ulster Presbyterian or a single Southern Prot- \ 
estant, without the existence of one "Scotch-Irish- i 
man," the problem of an Irish nation was full grown : 
in the reign of Henry VIII. With him, however, and i 
with his comprehensive policy, commences the Ireland i 
that we know to-day. Modern landlordism sprang ' 
from his polity. So did the religious question. So did i 
the administration of Ireland by non-Irishmen and i 
anti-Irishmen. So did modern Irish patriotism. j 

In his reign, on the surface a benign one, originated : 
the most serious of all political evils; the implantation j 

i 

of a national problem which divides the will and yet \ 
cannot be solved without unity of will. That problem J 
was first implanted by peaceful methods, in the belief \ 
that conquest would be unnecessary. But when these 

106 i 



The Conquest 

methods failed, because too arbitrary, England went 
to work with sword, with fire, with famine, with mas- 
sacre, torture, poison, exile, and execution. Her plan 
was weighed and deliberate. It had the aim of legality 
in the beginning, but later it appeared without disguise 
in its desire for profit and dominance, working on the 
theory of race-superiority to the ends that England's 
success seemed to demand. "Christ did not die for the 
Irish." The resulting shame and ruin were afterwards 
generously ascribed by patriotic Englishmen to "blun- 
ders" and "mistakes." But the burning of state papers 
had not then become an accomplishment of the English 
Government. And from state papers the history of 
English policy is to be fully derived. 

In 1521 the Duke of Norfolk (then Earl of Surrey) 
unfolded his plan about Ireland. 

"The land shall never be brought to good order 
and subjection but only by conquest, which is, at your 
Grace's pleasure, to be brought to pass in two 
ways ..." 

Henry VIII did not see eye to eye with Surrey. He 
weighed the policy of conquest, especially after the 
crushing of the Geraldines, but he had no spare money. 

107 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

\ 

He had his complications with France and Spain, and 
he had his young Reformation to nourish. In addition I 
he agreed with Machiavelli that it was better to win a : 
people's confidence than to depend on fortresses. And \ 
the fiasco of the Geraldine rebellion gave him his chance. \ 
First he planned to launch Reformation in Ireland. \ 
Since the Normans, there had, of course, been no "re- I 
ligious" question except the question of having pro- ; 
English bishops. The Gaels from Scotland and the 

Hebrides, "piratical marauders," were now firmly set- i 

j 

tied in Down and Antrim, but of course they were I 
Catholics. The English in the walled towns were tena- 
ciously Catholic. The Anglo-Irish lords, who traced i 
their moral right to be in Ireland to a papal bull, were ] 
ardent in their faith. The higher clergy, appointed. | 
from England and sanctioned by Rome, had no theo- 
logical difficulties. ; 

Perhaps the only people questioned as good Catho- 
lics were the beggar friars who went amongst the ; 
country people and kept God and education alive in \ 
the windowless hovels. Now these friars, and the occu- \ 
pants of five hundred monasteries, were to be sup- ; 
pressed. Neither Irish nor Ango-Irish welcomed ! 
this disorganization. The monasteries, for one thing, | 
served as inns. The English who imported the Refor- : 

108 



The Conquest 

mation found themselves intensely unpopular for rea- 
sons of heart, head, and belly. But the new bishops 
and their hangmen peddled their reform through the 
country, amid "angers, slanders, conspiracies, and, in 
the end, the slaughter of men.'' 



Yet this transfer of the church and the schools went 
hand in hand with a policy of political conciliation. 

Irishmen were not citizens. They stood outside the 
Pale, the "little place," and consequently outside Eng- 
lish law. "The mere Irish were not only accounted 
aliens but enemies, and altogether out of the protec- 
tion of the law, so as it was no capital offense to kill 
them . . . every Englishman might oppress, spoil and 
kill them without controlment." (Sir John Davies.) 
Thus conciliation had a way to travel, especially as 
Lord Leonard Gray was about to be executed for hav- 
ing practised it. But statecraft is nimble. 

The "five bloods" or royal septs were technically 
within the law. But they had helped Lord Thomas in 
his rebellion. So long as the Government planned to 
exterminate them, they would not dare to "come in." 
But the Government made it plain that it wished to 

109 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

conciliate them, and they weakened. They were worn 
out and bled white* Years of warfare had devastated 





Ireland 




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under Henr/VIII 

!mi'$H TERRITORIES 
UNSHADED 


^jJ9 0"DONNELL 












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< 




3 

-_^ O'CONOR 




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<^^^ O'CONOR rV/yi 


^^ 






y O'BRIEN 2j< 


^OY 


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O-MORE X^ 


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P^ MAC 


CARTHY MOR //■ 


BARRY/Vy/^ 


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Li 











the country. Scotland and France had delayed to help, 
as they always did delay, and the new deputy led them 

110 



The Conquest 

man by man to the door of negotiation. By promising 
peace and offering territorial titles a surprising number 
of fresh "submissions" was collected — this time com- 
pelling the chiefs to acknowledge Henry VIII as lord 
of Ireland and to deny and forsake the bishop of Rome, 
The chiefs cheerfully and unequivocally "denied" and 
"forsook." Then, in 1541, they came to Dublin, ex- 
penses paid, to a parliament. McGillapatrick, now 
the Baron of Upper Ossony, was there, and Mac- 
Murrough, now MacMurrough Kavanagh, and an 
O'Neill and an O'Moore and an O'Brien and an O^- 
Reilly. Kildare's kinsman, the Earl of Desmond, was 
there, with Barry, Roche, FitzMaurice, and others of 
the "degenerate" English. Lord Ormonde, adept at 
languages, translated the proceedings for the Irish; it 
seemed that the master wished to be known hereafter 
as the king of Ireland. King of Ireland they made 
him without a pang. 

This was not all. In 1542 Con O'Neill went to 
London to be created an earl! One of the de Veres 
sponsored him. Next year Ulick Burke and the 
O'Briens followed. The king gave them cash and 
golden chains, each worth sixty pound odd. The 
London records bulged with Irish letters-patent and 
sparkling professions of allegiance. 

Ill 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

4< 

The common people of Ireland, meanwhile, were 
as chattels. When the O'Neill "came in" it was by 
English statecraft that his people must come in, and 
when he forsook the bishop of Rome it was assumed that 
thej must give up Rome. What happened, of course, 
was nothing so automatic. The Irishmen in their great 
blanket-cloaks brooded at their fires over the journey 
of O'Neill to London, and dark eyes flashed out of the 
blackness, and dark oaths, at the conversion of chiefs 
into landlords. The women and men, foster-mothers 
and god-fathers to the chiefs, now meditated on being 
"vassals." In the hills the herdsmen made note of the 
rumor. The bards sang of it. The harpers played 
it. The beggars mused on it, huddled outside the closed 
monasteries. Coming with the new "religion,'* the 
patriarchial brehons and seannachies had food for 
thought. No more, it was said, was Gaelic to be spoken, 
or the Irish cloak to be worn. No more hurling. No 
more music. Everything and everybody was now to be 
English, except the bad money. The news flew from 
dining-tables to the kitchens, from kitchens to horse- 
boys and dog-boys, from these to the bogs and moors. 
And firearms, of course, were to be illegal. And Irish- 

112 



The Conquest 

men were to cut their hair like the new parsons, and to 
wear legal pants. 



Here, at last, by the silken thread, "by circumspect 
and politic ways," his Grace had led the Gaelic chiefs 
into the English system. "Proceed politically, pa- 
tiently and secretly," Henry VIII had told Surrey, 
"that the Irish lords conceive no jealousy or suspicion 
that they shall be constrained precisely to live under 
our laws or put from all the lands by them now de- 
tained." Now, by policy, patience, and secrecy, the 
Irish had been landed. Laws that were not their laws, 
customs that were not theirs, a new language, a new 
habit, a brand-new religion, were all condensed in the 
letters-patent and embraced by the gold chain. And 
rebellion meant — no more land. 

For long the Irish chieftains had played whichever 
way suited them. Now they were hooked. They could 
take over monasteries and secretly retain the monks. 
They could obstruct sheriffs, judges, coroners, baliffs, 
and the small fry of the English system. But their 
own people knew an Irish chief when they saw one; 
how could the people be deceived? Between the Irish 
folk and the English Government these chiefs were 

lis 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

now to decide. Their irresponsible days were over. 

For the lordlings who were Catholic on Monday 
and Protestant on Tuesday there was no problem ex- 
cept the serious problem of remembering the days of 
the week. For O'Neills and O'Briens and O'Conors and 
O'Donnells there was this choice of black or white. 

In forcing the choice there was a sincere English 
belief that as landlords the chiefs would be better off. 
There was, besides, another sincere English belief, the 
belief that the Brito-Romo-Celto-Anglo-Saxo-Dano- 
Franco-Cambrian ruling class was a ruling class very 
superior in its way of life to the barbarous Gaelic. 
And at bottom there was practical politics. The Eng- 
lish people, according to the French and Spanish naval 
peoples, could not tell a tub from a cat-boat, and had 
no place on the sea. That being the insolent Con- 
tinental attitude, and the O'Neills and O'Donnells al- 
ready having learned to solicit France and Spain, it 
was simple statecraft that the Irish should be mastered. 
The only way in which they could securely be mastered, 
in this view, was by being nationally made over. If they 
could be made into Englishmen, the Tudor statesmen 
felt, much might be done with them. It was this notion 
which led Henry VIII to conciliate the chieftains and 
offer them good feudal titles. It was this notion which 

114 



The Conquest 

led England to devise for Ireland (even in the seven- 
teenth century) a system of state education. Plans 
for exterminating the Irish were prepared, for crossing 
them on the better stock by shipping in English women, 
for deporting them in large numbers as slaves. These 
plans, most of them attempted, sprang from a mixture 
of swelled head and cold calculation. 

These crude plans were framed in the days of Sir 
Thomas More and Erasmus. The bird of imperial 
monarchy, said Erasmus, is the eagle; "a bird neither 
beautiful, nor musical, nor good for food, but murder- 
ous, greedy, hateful to all, the curse of all, and with 
its great powers of doing harm only surpassed by its 
desire to do it." Henry VIII applauded the immortal 
Erasmus. But, in those first years of the New Learn- 
ing, gunpowder as weU as the printing-press came into 
the hands of the Englishmen. Though each weapon 
was double-edged, printing was undoubtedly the great- 
est weapon ever forged for the liberation of man, and 
gunpowder was the greatest weapon for his enslave- 
ment. Yet while the printing-press in England was 
to make public opinion, and public opinion was to 
revolutionize parliament, the state concluded to de- 
prive Ireland of the printing-press and to monopolize 
gunpowder. And so drunk were Englishmen with 

115 



The Story of the Irish Nation j 

power and conceit that the very idols of English liberty j 
could not reach Ireland fast enough to carry out their [ 
policy of conquest. \ 

'i 

The first chapter of conquest is soon opened. After i 
Edward VI, a youth who died of tuberculosis, came \ 
Mary who married Philip. Mary was "Bloody Mary" \ 
in England because she persecuted the persecutors. \ 
In Ireland her Catholicism had far less effect than * 
her inheritance of Henry's valueless "submissions." 
For already the Gaelic system had revolted against i 
the system of feudal tenure. The people of each sept ' 

had their candidate and hero. There were people's \ 

i 

Burkes and people's O'Briens to battle with the choice ' 
made by England. In Ulster, protected by lake and ■ 
wood, the fight was most unqualified. Manus O'Donnell 
had astonished the lord deputy by not wearing a i 
loin-cloth ; he was "an elegant, somewhat foppish gentle- ; 
man, magnificently attired in crimson velvet, and at- j 
tended by his chaplain." But this Queen's O'Donnell, j 
"the lion in fight," had a battle with his son, and Con j 
O'Neill had to duel with the man he had named his heir. ; 
The "Redshanks" or Scottish Gaels, MacNeills and \ 
MacDonnells, used the favor of disorder to expel the 

116 



The Conquest 

MacQuillans and to levy "black rent'^ on the Eng- 
lish colonists. The English Government, on its side, 
gave aid and comfort to whichever Irishman would 
kill most Irishmen. Manwhile Shane the Proud, the 
Irish O'Neill, killed the English O'Neill in battle and 
resumed the headship of the sept. 

Shane O'Neill was a rugged specimen of his race, 
*^a great, aggressive invader of the territories of 
others." He fought against Elizabeth and manoeuvered 
with her for the return of his power, went to her court 
and there intrigued with France and Spain, attacked 
the Scottish Gaels to suit her deputies and yet defied 
her deputies. They, in turn, tried to poison him. As 
Froude saj^s so sympathetically, "the lord deputy's as- 
sassination plots were but the forlorn resources of a 
man who felt his work too heavy for him." 

Fighting the O'Donnells, Shane was in the end forced 
to flee to the men of the Hebrides. An English officer 
called Piers was with them. "At a given signal, the 
banqueting-room was filled with soldiers, and all the 
Irish were slain. O'Neill's head was sent to Dublin, 
and Piers received a thousand marks from the Govern- 
ment as a reward for the murder." (Taylor.) 

With the approach of Elizabeth's reign, as this story 
-^hows, came the finale of Henry's compromise with the 

117 



The Story of the Irish Nation ] 

chiefs, and the beginning of thorough conquest. Al- | 
ready the legal excuse of their submissions had been j 
used by Mary against the Leinster septs of Leix and \ 
Oifaly. When the O'Conors first bared their teeth, ' 
as the result of a dispute, the whole population was [ 
clean expelled from their lands, which now became \ 
King's County and Queen's County. Philip graciously i 
gave his name to Philipstown and Mary to Mary- \ 
borough. In revenge for dispossession the rebellious 
O'Moores and O'Conors ravaged the new settlers. It 
was not till 1577, on New Year's day, that the policy \ 
of conquest dealt effectively with these rebels. They \ 
were invited to a conference at Mullaghmast, there- | 
upon surrounded and massacred. This bit of frightful- ; 
ness settled one main group of Leinster chiefs for ever. \ 
The hideous massacre of Rathlin Island of 1575 was ' 
part of another clearance in Antrim. But these were > 
curtain-raisers. The big first act in conquest was \ 
five years later, in Munster. 



Since the early part of Elizabeth's reign had a 
religious motive, it is necessary to diverge for a minute. 
The Reformation in its turn called for the use of force, 
and force was supplied in the name of Christianity. 

118 



The Conquest 

In an age when Irishmen themselves could ill-treat 
one another as Brian O'Higinn the bard was ill-treated, 
it was not incredible that Dermot O'Hurley, Arch- 
bishop of Cashel, should be tortured. "We have neither 
rack nor other engine of torture in Dublin Castle to 
terrify Dr. Hurley," the commissioners complained. 
But they did without a rack ; they oiled his feet, encased 
them in metal boots, and roasted them till the flesh came 
away with the boot. Then, after a delay of some weeks, 
Dr. Hurley was hanged. The finer points of doctrine 
were scarcely considered in this Reformation, which 
was in essence the establishment of a loyalist political 
church. There were time-servers on both sides, some 
of the Anglo-Irish exceeding the New English in their 
zeal for Protestantism. But the people in the towns, 
many of the nobility, and virtually all of the people 
remained Catholics. And the "heretic" clergy now 
moved through Ireland, hunted, disguised, perpetually 
"on the run." 

8 

Now we come to the drastic and ferocious conquest 
of Munster. It must first be said that the policy to be 
described hereafter did not have the hearty assent of 
every one in the English Government. Some balked at 

119 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

assassination, some at massacre, some at the killing : 
of women. Lord Burghlej, the great statesman of his ; 
day, said that "the Flemings had not such cause to ; 
rehel against the oppressions of the Spaniards as the i 
Irish against the tyranny of England." But, as the | 
English historian Froude points out, the gentlemen ' 
who actually had Ireland in their power "had been ; 
trained in the French wars, in the privateer fleets, or \ 
on the coast of Africa, and the lives of a few thousand ] 
savages were infinitely unimportant to them." Besides, \ 
the Continental powers being Catholic and Ireland \ 
being Catholic, it was assumed that the conquest could | 
not be too soon or too savage. | 

So, when the FitzGeralds, faced by confiscation and \ 
beggary, at last committed themselves to a rebellion in \ 
Munster, with the aid of two thousand Scots in the | 
North, with the aid of the O'Bymes in Leinster, who \ 
won a signal victory, and with the aid of the Spanish i 
from across the sea, the Elizabethans had an opportun- ; 
ity to carry out their frightfulness. j 

At Smerwick, where the Spaniards landed, the gallant ; 
Sir Walter Raleigh appears in Irish history. "When ] 
the [Spanish] captain had yielded himself, and the fort \ 
appointed to be surrendered. Captain Raleigh, to- 



...J 



The Conquest 

gether with Captain Macwortli, had the ward of that 
day, entered into the castle, and made a great slaugh- 
ter, many or most part of them being put to the 
sword." The bodies of those unarmed men whom Ral- 
eigh and his band had butchered, six hundred in all, 
were stripped and laid out on the sand, " ^as gallant 
goodly personages,' said Grey, 'as ever were beheld.' '^ 

The state papers for Ireland, 1580, are blunt. 
"The fFortes were yielded, all the Irishmen and women 
hanged, and four hundred and upwardes of Italyans 
and others put to the sworde ... A ifrayer and others 
kept in store to be executed after examination had of 
them . . . Next day was executed an Englishman who 
served Dr. Saunders, one Plunckett, and an Irish Priest 
theire armes and legges were broken and hanged upon 
a gallows." 

But Christianity was already demanded by foreign 
policy. "The queen," said Lord Bacon, "was much 
displeased at the slaughter." 

"The queen," said a later historian, "expressed the 
utmost concern and displeasure at this barbarous ex- 
ecution." 

The queen, on the contrary, expressed herself as 
pleased. Her letters, "written in Roman hand by her 

121 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Majesty," found the enterprise "greatly to our 
lyking." She thanked Grey for '^performing this so 
acceptable service." In a later letter, complaining 
only of the cost of conquest, she renewed her thanks 
for great good services, "chiefly in the late exploit 
you did against the strangers . . . Proceed on cheerfully 
to do your best." 

From the mouths of Bingham, Walter Raleigh, and 
others, we learn how the fighting proceeded. In Con- 
nacht the English planned a land settlement, provoked 
a rising, and slew "fourteen or fifteen hundred, besides 
boys, women, churls and children, which could not be 
so few, as so many more and upwards." Sir Peter 
Carew "murdered women and children, and babies that 
had scarcely left the breast." Malbie and Zouche 
report killing "men, women, and children." "There 
escaped not one, neither of man, woman, nor child." 

A great estate fell to Walter Raleigh, in reward for 
his part in this "Mahometan conquest." Another 
estate, with two abbeys, fell to the poet Edmund Spen- 
ser. He served as a secretary. From him, who agreed 
in this bloody policy, we have that famous passage on 
the scene he himself beheld: 

Munster "was a most rich and plentiful country, 
full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought 

1S2 



The Conquest 

they should have been able to stand long, yet ere one 
year and a half they were brought to such wretchedness 
as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out 
of every corner of the woods and glens they came 
creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could 
not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; 
they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves ; they 
did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find 
them; yea, and one another soon after, insomuch as 
the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of 
their graves ; and if they found a plot of watercresses 
or shamrocks, there they flocked as to feast for 
the time, yet not able long to continue there withal; 
that in short space there were none almost left, and a 
most populous and plentiful country suddenly left 
void of man and beast." 



This was the first act, as savage as the most savage 
Elizabethan tragedy. By 1583 Munster was a waste, 
with the Earl of Desmond whipped and hunted to 
Kerry. There, in a hovel, he was found by a few 
straggling soldiers. "I am the Earl of Desmond. 
Spare my life," he pleaded. Instead, his rescuer 

123 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

dragged the elderly man out and killed him, for the 
Government reward. 

Now followed confiscation, after the example of 
Leix and Offaly. About 250,000 acres were actually 




granted by the crown to English settlers, as Antrim 
had already been granted to Essex. An enormous 
number of legal disputes were originated, especially 
concerning the MacCarthys ; but some of the claimants 
were rudely disturbed by the next O'Neill rebellion. 



The Conquest 

10 

Hugh O'Neill succeeded Shane O'Neill. He was a 
man of finer metal. Trained at the Elizabethan court, 
where his father had left him, he realized that he had to 
deal with a statecraft which was not nice in point of 
honor. He himself had no scruple to play double with 
Elizabeth. He was undoubtedly waiting for the Ar- 
mada to come to Ireland. Up to then and after he 
took as good pains as any Tudor not to reveal his 
hand. He lied, he dissembled, he bent the knee. 
Secretly he armed and trained his troops. The head 
of the O'Donnells, Hugh Roe (Ked Hugh) O'Donnell, 
he could not reach. When a boy an English captain 
had invited O'Donnell on board ship to buy wine, and 
had kidnapped and delivered him to Dublin Castle. 
That was in 1587. In 1591, on Christmas night, 
young O'Donnell managed, as so many Irishmen have 
managed, to escape from his English jail. He and Art 
O'Neill, who was in prison with him, dragged their way 
as far as Glenmalure. There, in the snow of the moun- 
tains, their strength gave out; they were numb when 
found by a servant of the O'Byrnes. The O'Neill boy 
was already dying. Hugh Roe was revived, and, al- 
though partially crippled, he recovered. 

125 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Four years caged in Dublin Castle had made Hugh 
Roe O'Donnell ready to think of England as his enemy. 
He found Hugh O'Neill of the same judgment and 
faith. By 1595 the two Hughs were ready for a war 
which would drive out the English. 

In that war O^Neill and O'Donnell gathered up all 
the matters of state that had created grievances in 
Ireland since England professed to reclaim Ireland 
"from barbarism to a godly government." It had 
previously been reaffirmed that Englishness be made 
obligatory, that "all brehons, carraghes, bards, rhym- 
ers, friars, monks, Jesuits, pardoners, nuns, and such 
like," be executed by martial law. Now O'Neill and 
O'Donnell demanded complete religious liberty, political 
independence in Tir Owen and Tirconnell, a Catholic 
university, freedom to go overseas for learning, and no 
Englishmen as churchmen. 

"Ewtopia,'* wrote Cecil on these demands: the war 
proceeded. 

11 

Success attended O'Neill and O'Donnell. They de- 
stroyed an English army at Yellow Ford, with Burke 
of Sligo and MacDonnell of the Isles fighting for them. 
This victory aroused the whole country. Essex arrived 

126 



The Conquest 

to lead the English. There were still some Irish without 
any sense of unity. Securing the help of O'Conor Don, 
Richard Burke and Maelmuire MacSwiney, the English 
leader, Clifford, attempted to reach the North ; he suf- 
fered a heavy defeat in the Battle of the Curlew Hills. 
A prompt truce between Essex and O'Neill brought 
Essex into Elizabeth's disfavor and removed him from 
Ireland. A cool and competent deputy. Mount joy, 
took Essex's place and turned the tide. 

The spirit of this rebellion was deeper than Ulster 
alone. Lewy O'Clery has left us a contemporary life 
of Hugh Roe O'Donnell which quotes his talk to his 
soldiers before the Battle of the Curlews : "We, though 
a small number, are on the side of right as it seems 
to us, and the English whose number is large are on 
the side of robbery, in order to rob you of your native 
land and your means of living, and it is far easier for 
you to make a brave, stout, strong fight for your native 
land and your lives whilst you are your own masters 
and your weapons are in your hands, than when you 
are put in prison and in chains after being despoiled 
of your weapons ..." 

But Spain was still the hope. Both O'Neill and 
O'Donnell knew the hopelessness of matching a coun- 
try of less than a million inhabitants against a country 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

of six million or so. So O'Donnell had, in his own 
good Spanish, implored Spain to come to Ireland^s 
aid. Not till 1601 did 3000 Spanish arrive, however; 
and when they arrived Mount joy and Carew had 12,000 
troops to blockade them in Kinsale. 

12 ^ 

A lightning march from Ulster failed to unite the 
Irish with the Spanish. A day's march of forty-two 
miles across frozen country enabled O'Donnell to evade 
pursuit but when O'Neill and O'Donnell reached Kin- 
sale, impatience (against O'Neill's advice), led them to 
hasty attack. A confused retreat, which became a 
panic, brought the insurrection to an inglorious finish. 
Hugh O'Donnell escaped to Spain, An English agent 
named Blake followed and, in 1602, earned his fee by 
poisoning O'Donnell in his castle at Simancas. The 
evidence of this assassination was revealed in letters 
that have since come to light. 

This was a catastrophe to Irish arms and Irish 
courage. Carew was merciless to O'Sullivan Beare at 
Dunboy. The rest of Munster was cowed. Mount joy 
in the North roped in Rory O'Donnell, and then he 
opened negotiations with O'Neill. During those nego- 
tiations Elizabeth lay dead in England but Mount joy 

128 



The Conquest 

kept this news from The O'Neill until he was once again 
"Earl of Tyrone." 

This is the Mount joy whose family name is immor- 
talized in an Irish prison. 

Concurrently with the war, the towns which Irish and 
Anglo-Irish had built up were handed over to English 
adventurers. From 1589 onward the towns were "occu- 
pied by soldiers, crushed by impositions, and forbidden 
to trade." Galway, Limerick, and Waterford were 
marked for isolation. "With every generation," says 
Alice Stopford Green, "the struggle was renewed 
through centuries of wilful ruin, till of the flourishing 
markets and fair towns of the Irish nothing was left 
but a starving village, a dim tradition, a crum.bling 
wall, or the name of a silent meadow, while the ports 
lay empty and rivers and lakes deserted," 

13 

The Earl of Tyrone was a beaten man. He and 
O'Donnell, his fellow-earl, were surrounded by Castle 
spies and English agents. Every needy scamp "re- 
vealed" plots to Dublin Castle. In 1607, their patience 
worn out, came the Flight of the Earls. O'Neill and 
O'Donnell entered Rome like princes, after a dangerous 
and terrible journey. Pope Paul V "received them with 

1S9 



The Story of the Irish Nation I 

}. 

the utmost state and ceremony." But Ireland was ; 
never to see either of them again. Hugh O'Neill, the I 
chief soldier and coolest leader in Ireland since the | 
Norman invasion, lived in fruitless and melancholy | 
exile till 1616. He and O'Donnell, who died in 1608, ' 
are buried in Rome. It was not for a generation that j 
another of this manful race, Owen Roe O'Neill, was to 1 

i 

attempt again to free Ireland by arms. | 

In the meantime Ireland lay prostrate. The plan \ 
of conquest could not be perfected until every potential ; 
rebel was actually and physically uprooted, women as \ 
well as men. But in the reign of Elizabeth the Irish had \ 
at least been permanently mown away in four Munster 
counties, parts of Connacht, Leinster, Clare, and Tip- 
perary. The accompanying military treatment had i 
cleared the path for judges and lawyers. Confisca- 
tions were in order, and the implanting of Presby- ] 
terians in Ulster. 



ISO 



CHAPTER VI 



THE CONFISCATIONS 



THE war after the war now began. With the 
abdication of the Ulster chiefs and with the im- 
possibility of further armed resistance, the Stuarts had 
a comparatively free field. What they designed at 
first was to put Ireland at ease in Zion. They wanted 
to make Ireland wholly subordinate, but a real part 
of the English system. The conquest of Ireland had 
cost Elizabeth about three milUon pounds — a vast sum 
in 1600. The Stuarts saw nothing in that. They 
needed revenue, especially from Ireland, and they sent 
Wentworth to make Ireland economically sound, for 
that reason. This enlightened selfishness benefited 
Ireland. It is true that Wentworth hampered the 
woolen industry, which England wanted to hog, but he 
went out of his way and put his own money into 
improving the very old and nation-wide linen industry. 
These useful economic policies, however, were accom- 

131 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

panied by a sinister social policy which in time wrecked 
everything. 

This policy can be defined in an Englishman's words. 
Before Elizabeth died Francis Bacon had analyzed the 
three fundamental difficulties with Ireland from the 
point of view of England's policy. 

"The first, the ambition and absoluteness of the 
chiefs of the families and septs." 

The chiefs, in other words, stood in the way o£ 
English "ambition and absoluteness.'^ 

"The second, the licentious idleness of their kerns and 
soldiers, that lie upon the country by cesses and such 
like oppressions." 

In brief, the soldiers, 

"And the third, the barbarous laws, customs, their 
brehon laws, habits of apparel, their poets or heralds 
that enchant them in savage manners, and sundry 
other dregs of barbarism and rebellion." 

In other words, the Irish national culture and co- 
hesion. 

To root out the chiefs, the soldiers, and the national 
culture was now the task to which English statecraft 
applied itself. 



132 



The Confiscations 



It was, on the whole, not meant to be malicious* 
Scotland and England were no longer embroiled, and 
King James was no longer in need of Hugh O'Neill's 
kerns or money. The royal mind could be given to the 
business of settling a country which had long been a 
distraction but which now was silent, leaderless, and 
limp. 

It was from Machiavelli's political philosophy that 
England gleaned its principles at this juncture, not 
from the King James version of the Bible. Machiavelli 
counseled colonies. "A prince does not spend much on 
colonies, for with little or no expense he can send them 
out and keep them there, and he offends a minority 
only of the citizens from whom he takes lands and 
houses to give them to the new inhabitants ; and those 
whom he offends, remaining poor and scattered, are 
never able to injure him; whilst the rest being uninjured 
are easily kept quiet, and at the same time are anx- 
ious not to err for fear it should happen to them 
as it has to those who have been despoiled. In con- 
clusion, I say that these colonies are not costly, they 
are more faithful, they injure less, and the injured, as 
has been said, being poor and scattered, cannot hurt.'* 

1S3 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

This suited James down to the ground. "From 
Machiavelli," says Lord Acton, James "took the idea 
of the state ruling itself, for its own ends, through ex- 
perts, not depending on the forces of society or the 
wishes of" common men. 

James's experts agreed on the desirability of loyal 
colonists. Blennerhasset wanted to crush the Irish 
harder, on Machiavelli's theory that injury ought to be 
of such a kind "that one does not stand in fear of 
revenge." But Blennerhasset's recommendations were 
considered excessive. Ireland had been decapitated. 
It looked absolutely powerless to the advisers of James. 

3 

The first practical business in Ulster was to clear the 
Irish out, the second to move the non-Irish in, the 
third to let no Irish return except safe Irish, in safe 
territory, at double the settlers' rent. 

The legality of the clearance is interesting. The 
crown had pardoned O'Neill and O'Donnell and had 
at last made the Irish people legal "denizens" of their 
own country. With the departure of O'Neill and O'- 
Donnell it was held right and proper to attaint them. 
This brought Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, and Armagh 
into the receptive lap of the state. O'Dogherty's spurt 

134 



The Confiscations 

of rebellion in 1607 cost him his life and whatever land 
he had held in these counties. As to Fermanagh and 
Cavan, Maguire and O'Reilly had also been "traitors,'^ 
which gave the crown its legal grip on two more 
counties. 

Unfortunately for British law, the judges had 
played fast and loose. They had made some grants on 
the EngHsh theory that the land belonged to the chief, 
but in. other cases on the Irish theory that the land 
belonged to the clansmen: in Cavan and Fermanagh 
they had clearly committed themselves in respect of 
the clansmen as occupiers and freeholders. But to 
make the Irish into tenants at will was now demanded 
hj the clearance policy, and it was necessary for 
England to break its word. 

The English took all of these six counties except 
about one-eighth. Nearly three hundred Irish pro- 
prietors were given English title to 586,000 acres in 
view of their showing a right attitude toward the 
crown. The remaining 3,000,000 acres went to Eng- 
lishmen and Scotsmen; "laborers in the vineyard," as 
the Welsh lawyer Sir John Davies termed them. 

These laborers in the vineyard were recruited from 
two nations and two classes — ^but all from the state 
Protestant or Scottish Presbyterian religion. The 

135 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

large grants (of three thousand, two thousand, and 
one thousand acres) were made to English and Scottish 



Pre- Cromwelliaja 



Confiscations 




proprietors who were called undertakers because they 
"undertook" to colonize, build castles, and defend the 



1S6 



The Confiscations 

territory as knights. (Hence "baronetcies" were first 
devised by Bacon, to give honorific standing to under- 
takers.) Next, these proprietors, including the Lon- 
don companies, who got and still have the fatness of 
Londonderry, brought in English settlers and Scot- 
tish settlers of the sort that seemed required for the 
job. 

The English had a longer distance to transport their 
cattle and equipment. The Scottish poured in so fast 
that the ferrymen profiteered scandalously, pirates 
came ail the way from Barbary to raid them, and 
only the efficient Dutch fleet made their passage safe 
in the end. Even at high rents, many Irish Tenants 
crept in. 

Perhaps 40,000 Scottish came at once. They were 
self-selected in part, but chosen where possible on the 
ground that they had proved to be lively on the border 
and would turn that liveliness in the Irish direction. 
"The energetic scouring of the Scottish border," says 
Henry Jones Ford, "contributed some elements to 
Ulster plantation that did not make for peace and 
order." Vagabonds, masterless men, wife-deserters, 
and gentlemen sought by the law made rubble for the 

137 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

basement of the Ulster edifice. ''Divine Providence," 
the Rev. Robert Blair declared in 1663, "sent over some 
worthy persons for birth, education, and parts, yet 
the most part were such as either poverty, scandalous 
lives, or, at the best, adventurous seeking of better 
accommodation, set forward that way." 

"From Scotland came many, and from England not 
a few,'^ said the Rev. Andrew Stewart, "yet all of them 
generally the scum of both nations, who, from debt, 
or breaking and fleeing from justice, or seeking shelter, 
came hither, hoping to be without fear of man's justice 
in a land where there was nothing, or but little as yet, 
of the fear of God." 

Henry Jones Ford believes that these seventeenth 
century accounts are exaggerated. 



The result, at any rate, was the transfer of seven- 
eighths of this Ulster property from Irish chiefs and 
Irish clansmen. The new occupants were strong-handed 
men, willing to act as despoilers and ready to defend 
their spoils ; men. differentiated from the Irish by lan- 
guage, religion, habit, and political allegiance. They 
were better agriculturists than the fighting clansmen. 
But their very technic brought Irishmen back to the 

138 



The Confiscations 

land at any cost and very soon inculcated in all Ulster 
the old Irish custom of fixity of tenure or tenant right. 
What the Irish bailed to do was "to grow civil and 
become English.'^ 

To make them English filled the colonizing mind with 
zeal and a kind of religious glee. The Earl of Sussex 
and Perrot were good governors, yes, but "they did 
not abolish the Irish customs nor execute the law in 
Irish countries, but suffered the people to worship 
their barbarous lords and to remain utterly ignorant of 
their duties to G&d and the king.'' So Sir John Davies. 

God now has a place in state papers. The king's 
amnesty, says Davies, immediately "bred such comfort 
and security in the hearts of all men as thereupon en- 
sued and the calmest and most universal peace that 
ever was seen in Ireland." The law reigned everywhere. 
^'Which visitation, though it were somewhat distasteful 
to the Irish lords, was sweet and most welcome to the 
common people, who, albeit they were rude and bar- 
barous, yet did they quickly apprehend" order and law. 
The people in County Wicklow "are become civil and 
quiet." The streams of the public justice water the 
land, "without distinct or respect of persons." Sir 
John Davies, himself secure in a big Irish estate, quotes 
the Bible freely. 

139 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Lord Morley, called "Honest John" in England, does 
not in the least corroborate the Welshman : he sums up 
the treatment of the O'Byrnes to which Davies refers. 
If you want to understand "Irish turbulence," Morley 
suggested, you ^'should read the story how the 
O'Byrnes were by chicane, perjury, imprisonment, mar- 
tial law, application of burning gridirons, branding- 
irons, and strappado, cheated out of their lands." 

The British justice that the O'Byrnes received came 
from men who got their slice of the land. The fate of 
the O'Byrnes indicates why O'Neill and O'Donnell 
thought it better to leave while flesh was still on their 
bones. 

6 

Wentworth, afterward Earl of Strafford, now came 
over with his economic policy. He was a man of prac- 
tical ability v/ho stood no nonsense. He imported 
Elemish weavers to teach the Irish the best linen manu- 
facture. He improved flaxseed and corn-seed. On the 
question of land proprietorship, however, he pursued 
the English policy — depress and degrade Irishmen of 
property who won't become Englishmen. It had been 
established that "no length of occupation could give 
an Irishman any right to lands which had once been 
in English hands." This had shaken out more natives 

140 



The Confiscations 

and brought grants to Nugent, the Duke of Bucking- 
ham, etc., in Longford, Wexford, Leitrim, Westmeath. 
In their frantic eagerness to secure their titles, the 
Dublin Anglo-Irish parliament voted a large payment 
to the crown, on the understanding that they were now 
to be secure. Wentworth went behind this agreement. 
He invited the Galway grand jury (Anglo-Irish, .of 
course) to decide that certain titles were the crown's. 
The jury refused. The sheriiF went to jail, where he 
died, and the jurors were fined £4000 each. A more 
imaginative jury found a title for the crown in April, 
1637. 

The O'Brennans' territory in Kilkenny went to 
Wandesforde, Wentworth's secretary. Wentworth 
chuckled sardonically at the alacrity with which the 
other landowners did anything and everything in order 
to retain their means of livelihood. "I, that am of 
gentle heart," he wrote, "am much taken with the 
proceeding." 

The Irish, meantime, were beginning to be acutely 
conscious of -their fate as a nation despoiled. We know 
from Geoffrey Keating, whose Irish history was written 
in this period (1610), how the English propaganda 
of the period was revolting Irishmen. Keating wrote: 
"I belong, according to my own extraction, to the Old 

141 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

Galls (foreigners) or the Anglo-Norman race. I have ; 
seen that the natives of Ireland are maligned by every i 
modem Englishman who speaks of the country. . . • ; 
There is no historian who has written upon Ireland ' 
since the English invasion, who does not strive to vilify ■ 
and calumniate both Anglo-Irish colonists and the \ 
Gaelic natives. We have proofs of this in the accounts \ 
of the country given by Cambrensis, Spenser, -Stani- \ 
hurst, Hanmer, Camden, Barclay, Morison, Davies, i 
Campion, and all the writers of the New Galls [English : 
new in Ireland] who have treated of this country" But | 
Keating's contempt for the dung-beetles, as he called ' 
the propagandists, was nothing to the growing exas- I 
peration and rage and despair of those who experienced i 
what has been termed "systematic iniquity." The \ 
outcome was the insurrection of 1641. i 



In this insurrection, which extended into a war, i 

there was a serious conflict of motives. In the world 

j 

at large Rome strove to intensify and force Catholic ! 
claims and England commenced to be intolerant. This j 
enlisted against England such divers groups as the ^ 
Scottish Covenanters, the Anglo-Irish Catholic aristoc- \ 
racy, and the Irish common people. The Covenanters 

142 i 



The Confiscations 

were already in revolt in the Lowlands and soon put an 
army into Ireland. But the question at once arose, 
which England to fight, the Royalist England or the 
Parliamentarians. The Parliamentarians were "Eng- 
land" as much as the Royalists ; they indeed believed 
that, underneath, Charles was not only an absolutist 
but a papist. Since the Thirty Years' War, really 
religious war, was raging on the Continent, it was 
natural that the religious passion should enter into 
every phase of this crisscross conflict. 

Rory O'Moore (an O'Moore of Leix), Richard 
Piunkett, Sir Phelim O'Neill, a Maguire of Cavan, were 
all engaged in planning an insurrection. Spain was to 
help, and General Owen Roe O'Neill to come from 
Flanders. This plot was complicated by the fact that 
the Anglo-Irish gentry had their own general, Preston, 
a Royalist, who later took the field. The crown 
authorities in Ireland learned of the plot from a 
drunken babbler (drunkenness now appears in Irish 
chronicles), but before they could act the North was in 
upheaval with a rising of the "injured and dispos- 
sessed." Because the Scots were in arms against Eng- 
land about the prayer-book. Sir Phelim O'Neill's peo- 
ple picked no bone with the Scottish settlers. They 
concentrated against the English settlers, and started 

. 143 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

a clearance. At first there was little manslaughter, 
though ruthless expulsion and cattle-driving. But the 
Scottish settlers would not stand by. They joined 
with the troops from Dublin to stop the insurrection. 
What began as a clearance became a melee of disorder, 
violence, and vengeance. It alarmed and enraged the 
English in Ireland as nothing had before. It meant 
that confiscation might not work. A great number of 
English were killed by the Irish, in many cases under 
ferocious and cruel circumstances worthy of Raleigh, 
Gilbert, and Carew. The number used to be given as 
300,000, but, under modern analysis, is believed to have 
been 4029. To make matters worse. Sir Pheiim 
O'Neill, the leader of the insurrection, had cut a great 
seal of Scotland and tacked it on to a forged "com- 
mission" from Charles I, wliich was supposed to sanc- 
tion a rising of the papists. The object of this dis- 
honesty was to enlist the Anglo-Irish Catholics. O'Neill 
eventually was captured and executed. He admitted 
the forgery, and declined to accept a Puritan pardon 
on condition that he assert the commission to be au- 
thentic. 

8 

Now Owen Roe O'Neill arrived in Ireland — "a good 
soldier," according to Morley, *'a man of valor and 

144 



The Confiscations 

character, the patriotic champion of Catholic Ireland." 
He found, of course, that Gaelic Catholic Ireland 
needed coordination above everything; coordination 
with the Catholic Anglo-Irish and peace with the 
Royalist Anglo-Irish. For this purpose the Confed- 
eration of Kilkenny was called. It was virtually a 
supreme council of the allied Irish, which lasted most 
of the nine years. 

In August, 164*2, England split asunder. The Par- 
liamentarians took the field against the Royalists. 
This gave Owen Roe O'Neill and Preston and Ormonde 
a common enemy in the Parliamentarians, but they 
were not ready yet to make common cause. The Old 
Irish were still "papist rebels" to the conservative 
Ormonde: his idea of a sound alliance with the papists 
was to whittle their aims. The terms of such compro- 
mises were bitterly contested at Kilkenny, where the 
allies met with much pomp. The papal nuncio Rinuc- 
cini stood out for the Old Irish and complete freedom. 
The Anglo-Irish landlords and the Anglo-Irish towns- 
men had too much race prejudice to care for their 
Old Irish rural confederates. The Parliamentarians, 
meanwhile, had managed under Parsons, Coote, and 
Lord Inchiquin to live up to the best traditions of 
savage warfare. Lord Inchiquin, known as Murrough 

145 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

the Burner, was an O'Brien of the old stock, now more j 

Protestant than the Protestants. "Nits will make | 

lice," was the principle on which Coote killed infants. ] 

The Scottish Covenanters, at first shocked by Charles's \ 

execution, at last joined Coote and company on the side 

of the Parliamentarians. They came down through \ 

Ulster. At Benburb (July, 1646), they were badly j 

beaten by Owen Roe O'Neill. Murrough the Burner i 

won in Munster, however, and massacred his own coun- ; 

i 
trywomen at Cashel. Ormonde, beaten by the parlia- j 

mentarians at Dublin, threw in the sponge. Later, I 

after Owen Roe had tried direct methods, Ormonde j 

manoeuvered the Old Irish out of the policies of the ■ 

Confederation. In 1649, on the last day of January, ; 

Charles I was executed. In November, frustrated and | 

worn out, Owen Roe O'Neill died at Cavan. ! 

\ 

9 

i 
This left the field in Ireland to Ormonde: he was 

already working for young Charles II and the ascen- \ 

dancy of his own class in Ireland. But Ormonde had j 

a tough nut to crack in Oliver Cromwell. 

This brutal fanatic arrived in Ireland August, 1649. i 

He got to Drogheda in September. At Drogheda the 

Ormonde soldiers, in part English and in part men j 

146 



...J 



The Confiscations 

from Kilkenny, were stormed and beaten. Their com- 
mander was disarmed and, "being in the heat of ac- 
tion," as Cromwell expressed it, "I forbade them to 




spare any that were in arms in the town." About two 
thousand disarmed men were stabbed and slashed to 
death. Eighty ran for their lives, to a steeple. 
"Whereon I ordered the church steeple to be fired, when 
one of them was heard to say, 'God damn me, God con- 

147 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

found me ; I bum, I burn !" Fifty were dragged from 
the steeple and killed. Thirty burned to death. A 
thousand more had taken refuge in the church. There, 
on the previous Sunday, the crime of saying mass had 
been perpetrated. These also were followed up and 
killed. The friars were now sought for. "All the 
friars," Oliver tells his parliament, "were knocked on 
the head promiscuously but two. The enemy were 
about three thousand strong in the town. I believe we 
put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. 
I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with 
their lives." 

Cromwell had 10,000 Ironsides with him against 
3,000. He lost sixty-four killed. 

*'It was the spirit of God," he told the parliament, 
"who gave your men courage . . . and therewith this 
happy success. And therefore it is good that God \ 
alone have all the glory." ■j 

This is not the verdict of commentators like Theo- \ 
dore Roosevelt. "It was the fighting of the Puritan \ 
troops in the battle itself which won, and not their : 
ferocity after the battle," says Roosevelt, "and it was i 

Cromwell who not merely gave free rein to this ferocity | 

I 
but who inspired it. Seemingly quarter would have \ 

been freely given, had it not been for his commands, j 

148 



The Confiscations 

Neither in morals nor in policy were these slaughters 
justifiable. Moreover it must be remembered that the 
men slaughtered were entirely guiltless of the original 
massacres in Ulster, more than a decade before. 

"Drogheda and Wexford," Roosevelt adds, "are 
black and terrible stains on Cromwell's character." 

CromwelPs account of his behavior sounds as if he 
were conforming to the current usages of war. What 
he did at Drogheda and later was contrary to the 
usages of Owen Roe O'Neill in the same period. O'Neill, 
in 1642, according to Lecky, "expressed, in the most 
emphatic manner, to his predecessor his horror of the 
crimes that had been tolerated. He sent all the English 
who were prisoners in his army safe to Dundalk. He 
burnt many houses at Kinnard, as a punishment for 
murders which had been committed on the English. 
He openly declared that he would rather join the 
English than permit such outrages to be unpunished. 
He enforced a strict discipline among his riotous fol- 
lowers, and showed himself, during the whole of his 
too brief career, an eminently able and honorable 
man." 

The massacres of 1641, however, had inflamed Eng- 
lish feeling to fever-heat. For nine months Cromwell 
conducted his crusade of Jesus, who died that men may 

149 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

live, in the familiar spirit of reprisal. Against the : 
Royalists, Anglo-Irish Catholics, and remnants of the : 
Old Irish, he waged his war. With his celebrated i 
guns and his big army he took Dundalk, Wexford, New \ 
Ross, Kilkenny, Clonmel. At Clonmel, however, Crom- i 
well lost more than 1000 men in one assault, and disease | 
had eaten away hundreds of others. After Clonmel he i 
left Ireland. His General Ireton took Waterford, \ 
Limerick, Athlone, and Galway, while Ormonde's 

frightened garrisons gave up nearly all the Munster ; 

i 

towns. I 

In addition to his method of slaughtering men who j 
had laid down their arms, Cromwell deported a large | 
number of Irishmen and of boys and girls to the West S 
Indies and the American colonies. These were sold as ; 
slaves. 

J. 

10 \ 

The eleven years from the 1641 insurrection to the i 

J 

peace of 1652 were enormously destructive. From a \ 
population of 1,500,000, as estimated by Petty, slaugh- I 
ter and disease had brought the number down to 900,- j 
000. The extinction of these lives was accompanied : 
by a ravenous consumption and wilful destruction of I 
property. But more was to follow. A peace was die- \ 

150 \ 



The Confiscations 

tated by which both Irish and Anglo-Irish were to pay 
for their conquest out of whatever land they had left. 
In this remarkable settlement two strains of reasoning 
were combined. One was the reasoning of the Round- 
head who wished to punish the Anglo-Irish Royalist. 
The other was the effect of a rabid fear and hatred 
of the papist, Cromwell was a fanatical extremist of 
that dangerous type which substitutes righteousness 
for history. "Remember, ye hypocrites, Ireland was 
once united to England," he shouted in a manifesto 
answering the Catholic bishops. He talked in this 
strain as only a profoundly ignorant and ferocious 
righteous man can talk, declaring that Ireland had had 
"equal justice from the laws.'^ Thereupon he arranged 
for more confiscations, his supporters and kindred hav-^ 
ing subscribed for Irish land in advance of the con- 
quest. 

This Cromwellian settlement conveyed every acre in 
Ireland. Unless men could show that they had been 
right all the way through (anti-papist, anti-Royalist, 
anti-Irish, but also pro-Parliamentarian and pro- 
English), they lost their shirts. Cripples, invalids, in- 
fants, old men, and old women who failed to prove 
that they had borne arms for the Parliamentarians — » 
all lost their land. Only twenty-six Catholic land- 

151 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

lords in Ireland were able to qualify under terms that \ 

so heavily taxed both honor and invention. These '■ 

white blackbirds proved their "constant good affec- | 

tion" and retained 80,000 acres. ■ 

Eleven million acres were confiscated in all. "Of 

these," says W. F. T. Butler in his masterly book on \ 

"Confiscation in Irish History," "about half a million \ 

belonged to loyalist Protestants such as Lords Or- ; 

monde, Inchiquin (who had quarreled with Parliamen- j 
tarians), and Roscommon. The other ten and a half 

millions belonged in 1641 to Catholics." i 

Of the eleven million acres confiscated. Catholic \ 

landowners received back 1,100,000 in Connacht and j 

Clare. The remaining ten million acres — ^half Ireland i 

- — were the spoils of war. j 

Half the forfeited lands were given to civil "adven- ' 

turers" who had ad-ventured £360,000 for the sup- ; 

pression of the rebellion. The other half went mainly ; 

to Cromwell's officers and soldiers. These latter re- i 

€eived Irish land in lieu of back pay. Contractors \ 

were included in this scheme of reparation, and seventy i 

eminent republicans helped themselves to 120,000 acres i 

**of some of the best lands." Cute men like Sir William \ 

Petty did very well a few years later in buying out I 

bored or improvident settlers for a little ready money. \ 

152 



The Confiscations 

11 

"To hell or Connacht" was a hope, not an achieve^ 
ment. Mr. Butler points out that the first men 
threatened with transplantation were those Scottish 
denizens of Down and Antrim who had bought land 
there from Montgomery and Hamilton. (Down and 
Antrim had never been confiscated. The crows that fol- 
lowed the plow of confiscation got good pickings, but 
Down and Antrim were private pickings.) But these 
Ulster Covenanters escaped, dangerous as their prox- 
imity to Scotland was felt to be. And most of the 
unfree Irish escaped. These men, at the bottom of 
the Gaelic social system, were now at the bottom of 
the new system. Who else were to hew wood and draw 
water for the New English landholders ? A tremendous 
plea went up for "poor laborers, simple creatures." 
In the end, "only landowners, their families, and such 
of their tenants as chose to accompany them were 
forced to move into Connacht or Clare." "In all,'^ 
Mr. Butler computes, "there were 1073 landlords and 
nearly 27,000 persons" driven from Munster and Lein- 
ster to new lands. The people who suffered most were 
the chiefs and free clansmen who had retained half 
Ireland up to CromwelPs time. About six thousand 

153 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Catholic landowners who had established their titles 
were now debased in the social scale by being entirely 
deprived of lands. 

The serfs had to endure it, but not the fighting Irish 
or the Catholic townsmen of Anglo-Irish stock. More 
than thirty thousand of the population, depleting the 
trading towns of Waterford, Galway, and Kilkenny in 
particular, went out of Ireland. Countless Irishmen 
enlisted in the armies of France and Spain. 

When Charles II came back the lingering gentry 
cheered up. The lawyers got a stupendous crop of 
clients. But this was a test of cleverness and sophisti- 
cation in which the people who recovered their estates 
were Ormonde, Clancarthy, Clanrickard. "The lesser 
men," Mr. Butler assures us, "were deprived of every- 
thing.'* MacCarthy, O'Sullivan Bere, Viscount Ma- 
gennis of Iveagh, the O'Conor Don — they "lost every 
acre." "There is something curiously modern about 
all these proceedings," Mr. Butler drily observes. "On 
the one side we have the credulous optimism of the Irish, 
their idea that logic and right should override might, 
their belief in the justice of the cause leading them to 
ask for the unattainable, their inability to realize the 
dislike with which they were regarded by all parties in 
England, their failure to perceive that in the minds 

154 



The Confiscations 

of Englishmen the interests of England outweighed all 
other considerations, their want of union, the selfish- 
ness of their great men, in other words a complete ab- 
sence of political insight and ability. 

"On the other side there is the grim determination to 
make no concession without a struggle, the threat in 
the last resort of the sword, the appeal to race hatred 
and religious prejudice, the amazing dishonesty of indi- 
viduals seeking for place and profit.'* 

12 

The English, in short, had won. Out of the 1,100,- 
000 in Petty's estimate, 600,000 papists were living in 
one-room hovels without any hearth. "If you value 
the people who have been destroyed in Ireland as Slaves 
and Negroes are usually rated," says the pragmatic 
Petty, "the value of the people lost will be £10,335,- 
000." Petty^s tone is unmistakable ; the tone of com- 
placent victory. Trinity College, founded by Eliza- 
beth to convert the papist, is flourishing. So is the es- 
tablished church. But the Catholics are already half- 
fed, mangy, dingy, pulling the devil by the tail. Old 
bores tell the young people about "the flight of the 
earls." The young yawn, partly from fatigue, partly 
from hunger. The women of the family listen to great 

155 



._._.. J 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

talk about the Restoration and wonder in secret what 
is in the cupboard — half a candle, perhaps, a cracked 
pitcher, a broken rosary beads, a few pages of a torn 
genealogy. Those were great times, but now who is 
here? A wild, shy retainer who creeps to his corner 
without a word, a seannachy with gray beard who is 
like a violin with one string, a hunted priest with hollow 
eyes in a frieze mantle, a purple-faced ex-chief who used 
to have six thousand acres in Kerry — these are all 
that come to windy rooms where the Restoration of big 
estates is cogged and conjured. There is "credulous 
optimism," a, bottle of it, right by the man who has 
lived from 1610 to 1690, who has remembered well the 
day when the New Englishman arrived at Liss : he went 
to the roof of the castle and said, yes, this was now his 
property, as far as the eye could reach. That hap- 
pened not to one, but to every Catholic proprietor. 
It tore a thousand heart-strings. And our dreary 
friend with red-rimmed eyes had been born when the 
scorpions and whips of Elizabeth still left their welts. 
He had lived through Wentworth's jolly assizes; had 
watched the hand of confiscation creep over one prov- 
ince, then another; had heard the rumors of Catholic 
jacquerie, of Coote and Murrough the Burner; had 
learned that Sir James Craig the undertaker was busy 

156 



The Confiscations 

defending his rights. He had sat inside the circle of 
Cromwell's scourge, and harbored the breathless and 
the hunted. They had been warm and kind people, 
these optimistic Irish. The Normans had mingled 
with them, come to understand and unite with them. 
But now this debased man with a few debased coins 
had to go among the jackals of the law in London. 
People would shirk him, and his melancholy history. 
He would not know the right lawyer, or the right minis- 
ter, or the right minister's mistress. His Gaelic would 
amuse Mr. Smithkins. He would stoop to bribe — the 
wrong people. He would, like Pitt, get drunk. And 
he would brag and boast, and perhaps brawl, like Cap- 
tain Costigan. A dingy history, a damp ruin of a 
history, ending with a person called Petty who now 
owns the very beautiful land of Kenmare. 

13 

Well, there is one more shake of the dice, even after 
Oliver Plunkett has been tried, tortured, and executed 
for a non-existent Popish Plot, in 1681. 

That shake of the dice is on an exposed card, which 
is James II, against a concealed card, William. James 
is a Catholic king — at last. He makes Tyrconnel head 
of his Irish Government, who favors the Catholics. 

157 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

James is safe enough on the throne of England till he 
breeds an heir. Then the English, not relishing a 
renewal of political seasickness, send for the solid 
Dutchman, William III. 

A parliament is held in Dublin in 1689. It affirms 
tolerance to the Protestants but takes back the land. 
This is inflammatory. But the Catholic Irish are now 
pawns in a great European game. The French fleet 
under Tourville brilliantly defeats the combined Dutch 
and English at Beachy Head. James comes to Ireland. 
With a French army and Ormonde's Irish and the most 
militaristic of French advisers (who want to massacre 
all the Protestants, to start with), he meets William 
and his Dutch and his Danish and his Scottish at the 
battle of the Boyne. 

On July 1, 1691, "the battle of the Boyne was won, 
not in the legendary manner, by William, with his 
sword in his left hand, or Schomberg, plunging into the 
river to meet a soldier's death, but by the younger 
Schomberg, who crossed higher and outflanked the 
French. Tourville's victory, after that, was entirely 
useless. William off'ered an amnesty, which was frus- 
trated by the English hunger for Irish estates." So, 
Lord Acton. 

In the previous fighting at Londonderry, against the 

158 



The Confiscations 

Jacobite army, the 'prentice boys and Protestant set- 
tlers had stood siege magnificently. Now Limerick was 
to repulse William, with Patrick Sarsfield as the bril- 




liant Irish figure. Sarsfield's courage and daring en- 
liven the somber picture. But the battle of Aughrim, 
where the French general St. Ruth was killed at a 
crucial moment, turned the tide against absolutism, 
James, Louis XIV — and the Irish. 

159 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

14 

This ended the Stuarts. Beneath the drums that 
beat Sarsfield's honorable exit from Limerick one 
listened in vain for the breathing of the Irish nation. 
Englishmen had not only conquered Ireland but had 
removed from it everything that seemed worth having. 
Was anything left? A flicker of culture, and the 
Catholic religion — these were allowed to remain, by 
the treaty of Limerick. 

So the history of the seventeenth century limps to 
a close. It began in a lurid, bloody dawn. A gray 
morning followed, which was almost steady. But 
clouds gathered storm for the fierce noonday outbursts 
of 1641. For eleven years thereafter the skies were 
torn, the earth deluged, the country convulsed and 
desolated. After Cromwell, whose bloodshot eye saw 
the Irish as papist monsters, the afternoon was livid. 
With the restoration of the Stuarts, there came a 
quiver of watery sunlight, a thin flush of rose — for a 
few years of attempted and apprehensive reconstruc- 
tion. Then James II brought Ireland his lost cause, 
and drew on her the ugly, brutal wrenching tornado 
of the Williamite wars. Night at last descends. It is 

160 



The Confiscations 

a night of such blackness, cold, and horror that it re- 
minds one only of a no-man's-land in which two bands 
of crouching men are at work in the blackness ; one to 
kill the wounded, the other to rob the dead. 



161 



CHAPTER VII 



THE ABYSS 



THE native Irish were now broken, disorganized, 
and underfoot. When Sarsfield had capitulated 
at Limerick a treaty had been formally signed by 
which the Catholics should be safe from further perse- 
cution; and the Catholics meant five-sevenths of the 
people. "Both sides," says the English historian Green, 
^'were, of course, well aware that such a treaty was 
merely waste paper, for Ginkel had no power to con- 
clude it, nor had the Irish lords justice." The treaty 
was waste paper, to the English. William, a disbeliever 
in persecution, tried to honor the pledges that had 
been made to the Irish. But he was king on suffer- 
ance: the parliaments of England and Anglo-Ireland 
were too strong for him. Public opinion was the new 
ruler in England, and at the moment public opinion 
was cowardly, vindictive, and resentful. 

Out of these moods came the penal laws. These 

162 



The Abyss 

were laws intended to finish the work which England 
had begun in the reign of Henry VIII. From 1550 to 
1700, as the English viewed it, the Irish had shown a 
diabolic spirit. First, they were foreign: they spoke 
Gaelic, had a strange land system, wore queer clothes, 
resisted when attacked, were rustic and yet not con- 
vinced of their inferiority. 

Henry VIII had tried to solve their "problem'* 
(the problem, that is, of conquering them) by making 
their chiefs into earls and giving them a parchment 
title to the land which their kinsmen had always held. 
This ignored the claims of the sub-chiefs and their ad- 
herents. The work of forcing all these hot-headed 
people to take the "solution" made in London for Eng- 
lish convenience was too much for English temper. 
V^hen England added a state church to the rest of its 
superiorities, it developed a cold anger toward Ireland 
and did not take long to discover a moral basis for 
that anger. 

From the age of Elizabeth we derive the authorized 
English version of Irish character. By the time the 
war was over it was already clear to the English that 
the Irish were (1) barbarous, (2) lawless, (3) treach- 
erous, (4) malicious. In other words, the enemy. At 
this very time, unluckily, the English had learnt how 

163 



The Story of the Irish Nation ' 

to deal with the enemy in savage lands. They saw in 
Ireland another America, peopled by equally wicked j 
aborigines, and they thought it perfectly proper to ' 



William 
Orange 




FROM A STAtuE BY HEINBICH BAUCKE, PRESENTED BV 
KAISER WILMSUM ro BN&LANO IN (C|07. 



seize their possessions. The insurrection of 1641 was, 
in their view, the attempt of red Indians to massacre 
white people. Hence the popish, Gaelic-speaking, 
blanket-wearing Irishman became an object of moral 



The Abyss 

reprehension. A good Irishman was a dead Irishman. 
A natural desire for easy profit and "honest graft" 
heightened this feeling. Cromwell saw the Irish as 
hardly human : he massacred them with a complete con- 
viction of outraged Puritan ideals, half hoping that 
his use of force might drive out the devil. But the 
devil in the Irish combined with the devil in the Stuarts 
and Jacobites. When James II was in power he had 
the reckless audacity to appoint Tyrconnel as viceroy, 
whose friendliness to Catholics revived every fear of 
the English settlers. The wickedness of this proced- 
ure was evident. Whatever terms were agreed upon 
at Limerick, English-in-Ireland, hereafter to be called 
the Ascendancy, had no use for them. Nothing ap- 
peared more natural, in the flush of victory, than to 
devise a succession of laws which would humiliate, in- 
jure, and forever weaken the remnants of the Irish 
nation. 

What resulted, according to Green, was a hundred 
years of "the most terrible legal tyranny under which 
a nation has ever groaned." 



The penal laws were based on the fixed Catholicism 
of the common Irish. Accepting Catholicism as a 

165 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

superstitious and idolatrous practice to which the Irish 
were too ignorant not to cling, the men who had bene- 
fited by confiscation now proceeded to put the finishing 
touches to the conquest. They first limited the number 
of priests to eleven hundred, and banished the bishops 
who might ordain successors. They illegalized mass, 
except in the case of registered priests. Having thus 
endeared the church to the common Irish, they turned 
their attention to the laymen. 

The Irish CathoHc was excluded from the vote, from 
municipal and parliamentary oflUces, from even sitting 
in the gallery of the parliament. He was not allowed 
to become a barrister or solicitor, a sheriff or a con- 
stable. He was prohibited from residing in either 
Limerick or Galway. He was compelled to pay special 
and extra taxes. He was not allowed to carry arms, 
make arms, sell them, or join the army. He was for- 
bidden to print books or newspapers, to take more than 
two apprentices in any trade except linen manufacture, 
or to become an apprentice in any trade to any 
Protestant. 

He was forbidden to teach school. He was forbid- 
den to attend Catholic school or college. He was for- 
bidden to send his children abroad to school or college. 

He was not allowed to lease land for more than 

166 



The Abyss 

thirty-one years, or to make more than a certain profit 
on leased land, or to lend money on land. He was for- 
bidden, under automatic penalties as regarded prop- 
erty, to marry a Protestant. He was forbidden to 
leave his land to his eldest son. His eldest son could 
inherit all the land by turning Protestant: otherwise 
the land was to be split up among all the sons. 

Any child who turned Protestant could escape his 
parents' custody and obtain an allowance. Any eldest 
son who turned Protestant could immediately become 
the proprietor of the family estate, making his father 
a life-tenant. A wife who turned Protestant could re- 
ceive an allowance and a legal separation. Children 
left without parents were given to a Protestant guard- 
ian to be brought up as Protestants. 

No Catholic could own a horse worth more than £5, 
or keep a horse for which a Protestant tendered him £5. 

These laws were not for the exclusive benefit of the 
Catholics. The nonconformists were included in some 
of them. The ground was now laid for the republican- 
ism of Northeast Ulster, and for the fellow-feeling, 
sympathy, and magnanimity which the Quakers have 
so steadily manifested toward Ireland. 

These penal laws, it is important to note, were 
religious but also deftly economic. They were well- 

167 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

planned. Their object was to deprive the native Irish 
of capital, to drive them into the position of agricul- 
tural serfs and there give them the alternative of being 
endlessly sweated or of adopting the lowest possible 
standard of life. The Irish, need it be said, tried it 
both ways. When they worked themselves to the bone 
for their English masters, they were regarded as harm- 
less poor slaves occupying the station to which it had 
pleased a Protestant God to call them. When they 
declined to slave, they were called lazy, idle, shiftless, 
dirty, and drunken. English agriculturists like Arthur 
Young pointed out with much sagacity that it was 
slovenly of them to raise no crops except potatoes, 
foolish of them to drink cheap whisky, stupid of them 
to raise a houseful of children. All of these observa- 
tions were important and edifying, and have been 
quoted ever since by innumerable writers who never 
tried the experiment of raising a family on sixpence 

a day. 

3 

British justice, at any rate, was in the saddle. The 
hunt was on, and the hounds hot after the Irish for 
three generations. The black art of persecution can 
only be applied, however, at the price of public in- 
famy; and we witness the enslavement of the common 

168 



The Abyss 

Irish going hand in hand with the corroding of the 
Anglo-Irish character. No one can dispute the break- 
down of the Gaelic population. Equally no one can 
dispute the rottenness of the Protestant Ascendancy. 
What is commonly called Irish patriotism in this period 
is mainly the effort of this Protestant Ascendancy to 
purge itself. The names of Molyneux, Swift, Berkeley, 
Lucas, Flood, Charlemont, Grattan are associated with 
the Irish nation in the eighteenth century. But these 
men belong to Ireland scarcely more than Congreve, 
Goldsmith, Burke, Sterne or Sheridan. One of them, 
Grattan, put political resurrection in a single line: 
"The Irish Protestant could never be free till the Irish 
Catholic had ceased to be a slave.'^ But when the 
Irish Catholic gave signs of ceasing to be a slave, Pitt 
and British policy tore the flimsy independence of the 
Anglo-Irish to shreds, and rammed both slaves and 
slaveholders into the political internment-camp called 
the Union. 

Jonathan Swift, a disillusioned man with no senti- 
mentality and a tortured heart, was compelled to spend 
his days in penal Ireland. He has left his picture of 
the common people after one generation of penal laws. 

"It is a melancholy object to those who walk through 
this great town or travel in the country," he wrote 

169 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

from Dublin in 17S9, "when they see the streets, the 
roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the 
female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all 
in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. 
These mothers, instead of being able to work for their 
honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time 
in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants, 
who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of 
work, or leave their dear native country to fight for 
the pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the 
Barbadoes." 

Why not, says Swift in savage irony, stew, roast, 
bake, or boil these superfluous babies? They would 
make succulent food. 

The old, he declares, are taken care of. "It is very 
well known that they are every day dying and rotting 
by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as 
can be reasonably expected. And as to the young 
laborers, they are now in as hopeful a condition; they 
cannot get work, and consequently pine away from 
want of nourishment, to a degree that if at any time 
they are accidentally hired to common labor, they 
have not strength to perform it ; and thus the country 
and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to 
come." Destroy the babies, then, and the Irish prob- 

170 



._j 



The Abyss 

lem is solved. "For first, as I have already observed, 
it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with 
whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal 
breeders of the nation as well as our most dangerous 
enemies; and who stay at home on purpose to deliver 
the kingdom to the pretender, hoping to take their 
advantage by the absence [absenteeism] of so many 
good Protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their 
country than stay at home and pay tithes against 
their conscience to an episcopal curate." 



Swift's irony is sound history. It enables us, even 
without the aid of innumerable documents that sup- 
port it, to see the abominable servitude to which the 
Irish are reduced. 

Some hundreds of thousands of Irishmen are pouring 
to the Continent, to fight as willing mercenaries in the 
ranks of France, Austria, and Spain. From these 
refugees came the famous Irish Brigade. Count 
Thomas Arthur Lally, Major O'Mahony, the Due 
de Feltre, General O'Meara, Prime Minister Wall 
in Spain, General Peter Lacy in Russia, Field-Marshal 
Lacy in Austria, John Barry of the American navy, 

171 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

O'Higgins of Chile — these were some of the Irish flung 
far from Ireland. 

Those who remain at home have sunk in the social 
scale. Most Irishmen now have the rank of day- 
laborers. They live in mud huts on potatoes, skim 
milk, or water. They are lia^ble to typhus and famine. 
A great famine kills 150,000 in 1740-41. Yet they 
breed fast, and as the young grow up they become 
cottiers ; men who pay a high rent for a tiny holding, 
on which they hope to keep a cow or two, a pig, a few 
ridges of potatoes. They work for their landlord as 
well as pay rent, and if they displease him, he (or more 
likely his agent) evicts them at will. The land, for 
which they are not educated, is the main Irish occupa- 
tion. A pipeful of tobacco is the one luxury they per- 
mit themselves. They hve in rags, afraid of the land- 
agent's estimating eye, the tithe-collector who is en- 
titled to their Catholic pennies for the established 
church, the gombeen-man who lends them money for 
the frequent funeral, the hearth-money man who collects 
their taxes though they have no hearth. Their furni- 
ture is a black pot, a basin, a wooden stool, one cup 
or perhaps two, a heap of straw for a bedstead. The 
manure-pile in front of their door is filthy. To keep 
clean, or to keep the children clean, is literally impos- 

172 



The Abyss 

sible, and yet kind ladies already exist who want them 
to be clean and energetic and self-respecting and 
Protestant. But most of the gentry are content to 
ride galloping by, to live a life which centers around 
the claret-bottle and the punch-bowl, dueling and gam- 
ing, to sit as the stern magistrate on the bench and 
order men and women flogged for trivialities, to avoid 
fair dealing as weakness, and to regard mercy as 
treason. 

We may leave the native Irish out of history for 
three generations. Many of them have traditions to 
which they adhere, despite the fate of serfs. They 
have enough spirit left to compose religious songs and 
love-songs in Gaelic. The blackbird does not know of 
the penal laws, and an Irish heart lifts to the voice of 
the blackbird. The sun is not Protestant or Catholic, 
and it shines for youth in spite of everything. Ire- 
land, the Dark Rosaleen, Roseen Dhu, is the object of 
intense yearning and pity and love. Men still dream 
of freeing Ireland. The hedge schoolmaster shambles 
into being. Children in bare feet kneel in the protected 
corner of thick hedgerows, and pluck a daisy or a 
dandelion with straying hand while their eyes follow 
the earnest man who teaches them their Latin. And, 
finally, there is the priest or the hunted bishop. There 

173 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

are humble homes, hovels even, in which the secret net- 
work of religious life is woven. The priest is becom- 
ing the leader, the counselor, the consoler. He is 
threatened by law with the branding-iron. He risks 
everything to shepherd his people. And upon him 
the people concentrate the loyalty in which England 
alone finds them deficient, the loyalty which is of all 
loyalties the strongest — the loyalty of the oppressed. 

There was a certain joy in whipping the Irish be- 
cause the Protestants had been ill-treated in France; 
it was easier than whipping the French themselves. A 
number of valuable by-products, in addition, seemed to 
be promised by persecution. There was a career for 
spies, for informers, for Charter School teachersj for 
priest-hunters. There was a great deal of rack-rent, 
to be spent at Bath and in London ; and a good living 
to be made by rent-rackers and men who "farm" the 
tithes. The wounds of Ireland attracted many flies. 



But these were small advantages, and the Anglo- 
Irish governing class of the eighteenth century had by 
no means an easy time. They represented not only 
the landed interest and church interest of Ireland but 
the mercantile interest ; and this was the era of that 

174 



The Abyss 

famous English mercantile theory by which an excess 
of manufactured imports was regarded as the road to 
ruin. It was England, the English parliament, which 
took the mercantile theory so seriously, which looked 
on Anglo-Irish manufactures with jealous apprehen- 
sion, which looked on the colonies as the God-given 
dumping-ground of its own products, and, in general, 
spread both elbows on the table and circled with eager 
arm the heaping platter of industrialism. 

Nothing could have been worse for Anglo-Ireland. 
For early in the eighteenth century the English parlia- 
ment, having completely eliminated the native Irish as 
citizens, took a severe tone toward the Anglo-Irish 
parliament in Dublin. By Poyning^s Law (1495) the 
Norman-Irish had themselves agreed that the assent 
of the English privy council must be procured before 
any bill could be introduced into the Irish parliament. 
They had also agreed that laws made by the English 
parliament could be applied to Ireland. But it sur- 
prised and pained the inheritors of this colonial states- 
manship to find that, in the day of their triumph over 
the native Irish, they were themselves to be curtailed. 
The English parliament had on previous occasions 
brutally prohibited the export of Irish cattle and Irish 
provisions. Now they set out to destroy Ireland's 

175 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

chief textile industry. They forbade the export of 
woolens. 

This was an act of tyranny for which the Anglo- 
Irish were neither socially nor constitutionally pre- 
pared. What, after all, was their status? "Though 
English to the Irish," said a Norman, "we are as Irish 
to the English.'^ This was still their status in the 
days of George I. When Ormonde had gone about im- 
proving Irish business in 1665 — importing Huguenots 
and other Continentals to make lace, linen, gloves, and 
glass — he had done so with a shrewd idea of the proper 
Anglo-Irish attitude. "If it prove or be thought that 
Ireland's being above water hurts England, some in- 
vention must be found to sink it." But this trade 
policy did not suit the Protestant bourgeoisie. The 
iron-works were continued until all the Irish forests 
were cut down for fire-wood ; that was all right, because 
the Anglo-Irish feared the "wood kerns'' or wandering 
soldiers who prowled in the shade. But what about 
prohibitions that were an obsequious answer to the pro- 
tests of English merchants.? And Scottish merchants.? 
What about the Navigation Acts, which crippled the 
Irish carrying-trade.? What about a law that did not 
allow the Irish to export glass, or to import glass 
except from England.? What about a law that pre- 

176 



The Abyss 

vented Ireland trading with the colonies, that put a 
duty on salt needed for the fisheries, and on coal, 
needed for everything? 

The struggle of Irish trade to establish itself in the 
eighteenth century against the commercial restrictions 
of England is best to be understood by remembering 
the Boston Tea-Party. Ireland, or rather Anglo-Ire- 
land, could have had a similar tea-party once a week. 



But the Anglo-Irish parliament had not only no 
standing in the eyes of constitutional lawyers; it was 
hopelessly corrupt within. Of its 300 members, 172 
were nominated. Of these 172, half were owned by 
the Government, half as private property with a cash 
price on them. The others were elected by something 
not remotely resembling a modern popular election. 

Till the middle of the century this corrupt little 
body was run in the "English interest.'* ^'Burgundy, 
closeting, and palaver" were later employed, but the 
greatest victory scored was simply the transfer of the 
most powerful boss from England to a small inside 
group of Anglo-Irishmen. 

The tail-light of history has not yet illuminated 
every crevice of these packed, non-representative as- 

177 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

semblies ; but we know enough to say ; foul. And yet 
Swift's voice was raised as early as 1720 to urge the 
Anglo-Irish to behave as freemen. He coined a fa- 
mous phrase: "In reason all government without the 
consent of the governed is the very definition of slav- 
ery. . . . The remedy is wholly in your own hands, and 
therefore I have digressed a little in order to refresh 
and continue the spirit so reasonably raised among 
you, and to let you see that by the laws of God, of 
nature, of nations, and of your country, you are, and 
you ought to be, as free a people as your brethren in 
England." 

Carpet-baggers, however, are not "of nature" free. 
The best men in Anglo-Ireland did not go so far as to 
call their associates carpet-baggers. They were, how- 
ever, sincere in their desire for reform; they wanted a 
definite term put to the life of a parliament, control of 
the money-bills, an abolition of sinecures, a rescinding 
of Poyning's Law, control of the militia, a tax on 
absentees. It revolted them to be treated as inferiors, 
to be run from England, by England, for England, at 
the cost of so much per vote. They never learned to 
like the manner in which their Majesties unloaded on 
Ireland the more subtle and intimate obligations which 
the English parliament brutally cold-shouldered. 

178 



The Abyss 

Lecky enumerates these items for which Ireland had 
to pay: "The Duke of St. Albans, the bastard son of 
Charles II, enjoyed an Irish pension of £800 a year; 
Catherine Sedley, the mistress of James II, had another 
of £5000 a year. William III bestowed confiscated 
lands, exceeding an English county in extent, on his 
Dutch favorites, Portland and Albemarle, and a con- 
siderable estate on his former mistress, Elizabeth Vil- 
liers. The Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of 
Darlington, the two mistresses of George I, had pen- 
sions of the united annual value of £5000. Lady 
Walsingham, the daughter of the Duchess of Kendal, 
had an Irish pension of £1500. Lady Howe, the 
daughter of Lady Darlington, had a pension of £500. 
Madame de Walmoden, one of the mistresses of George 
II, had an Irish pension of £3000. The queen dowager 
of Prussia, sister of George II, Count Bemsdorff, who 
was a prominent German politician under George I, 
and a number of less-noted German names may be 
found on the Irish pension list." 

The Anglo-Irish parliament is an instructive spec- 
tacle. If topics arose to excite public opinion — the 
debasement of the currency if not the debasement of 
the Catholics, the suppression of the woolen industry 
if not the suppression of dissenters — there immediately 

179 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

was revealed the morbid political condition of the j 
country. On what moral principle could the Anglo- i 
Irish rally their opposition to the English conqueror? 
Swift said, "the consent of the governed." But Swift j 
was too keen a mind to attempt to limit this principle j 
to the Ascendancy. In resenting the fact that Eng- j 
land could prohibit Irish goods while Ireland was not j 
free to retaliate, Swift and the honest men who rea- ; 
soned with him were in the way of ceasing to be hy- ; 
phenated and definitely becoming nationalist Irishmen. \ 
It was thus, in fact, that Protestant nationalism i 
started, as a natural outcome of humane conviction I 
and philanthropy. But in the sturdy refusal of such ! 
men to call themselves Englishmen so long as they ! 
were treated as colonials, there was as yet only a nega- i 
tive nationalism. The Anglo-Irish had a long way to I 
go before they became really Irish. 



The history of the eighteenth century is, in great 
measure, the failure of this Anglo-Irish parliament to 
become national. Out of their local ascendancy the 
meaner of the Anglo-Irish were content with the plums 
of bribery. The nobler of the Anglo-Irish hated brib- 
ery and the bribed. They saw that Ireland must have 

180 



The Abyss 

autonomy, and they risked a great deal to secure it.^ 
But it was only the few who perceived that no parlia- 
ment could be free unless it were representative, and 




no parliament could be representative unless it were 
popular — it was only these few who undertook the real 
task that confronted an Irish parliament. That task, 
of course, was to resurrect the Irish nation. It meant 
renouncing ascendancy and reversing the penal code, 

181 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

It meant breaking with England on its policy of im- 
perialism. This was more than the Anglo-Irish de- ; 
sired. They wanted to be democratic ; they also wanted \ 
to be on top. They wanted to be liberal; they also ' 
wanted to be safe. Grattan came nearer than any one | 
else to seeing the need for a united Ireland, but Grat- : 
tan's toleration of the Catholics was based on the i 
hypothesis that the Catholics would always be as loyal ' 
as himself. \ 
The Ascendancy had a plainer, rougher instinct for \ 
the facts. They knew that the Catholics could not be i 
"conciliated." The native Irish wanted Ireland: to ; 
share Ireland on an equality with the Irish was more ; 
than these Anglo-Irish squireens could stand. If the i 
placemen were displaced, the corruptionists expelled, i 
the rotten boroughs fumigated, the result must neces- ; 
sarily be to admit the democratic principle and flood : 
the parliament with Catholic Irish. This could not ; 
be. And because it was socially impossible Pitt found \ 

inside Grattan's parliament the seeds of corruption ; 

1 

which he was to ripen with such art and care. The j 

Act of Union was, of course, infamously manipulated. : 

Honest policies do not require such manipulation. But I 

it was the racial bigotry of the Anglo-Irish parliament \ 

which made it in the end so easy to destroy. i 

18^ \ 



The Abyss 

It had, however, British grandiloquence. Before it 
was destroyed a great many grand gestures were to be 
made in College Green and much rhetoric was to be 
expended. The bull-baiting and cock-fighting of the 
squireens were nothing to the denunciation of tyrants 
and oppressors which was to entertain the parliament. 
And because the Catholic native was already meek and 
debilitated, the penal laws were nobly relaxed. A 
Catholic was allowed to rent a bog for sixty-one years 
provided it was a mile from a town, more than four 
feet deep, etc. An innocuous Catholic Committee was 
tolerated about the middle of the century. 

8 

Very different were the Whiteboys, who sprang into 
existence in the South. The commons which had pre- 
viously been used hj the poor people for grazing had 
been forcibly enclosed, and as a result small bands of 
men who wore their shirts outside their coats (hence 
Whiteboys) roamed through the country threatening 
the obnoxious landowners, sometimes beating and 
cruelly injuring them. This was the beginning of the 
peasant revolts. In the North a serious agrarian war 
was also being waged. Lord Donegal, the descendant 
of that Chichester who by fraud had secured his big 

183 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

estates, was declining to renew leases except at a heavy 
premium. Other landlords were driving their tenants 
to work on the roads. The Oakboys (1761-62) and 
Hearts-of-Steel Boys (1771) were Presbyterians who 
would not stand forced labor, or eviction as the result 
of resisting fines. In the end the Ulster Land War 
was won by the tenants, after much violence, cattle- 
maiming, tithe-refusing, and general insubordination. 
But during this period, North and South, a steady 
emigration took place to the American colonies. The 
Southern emigration was the greater of the two. More 
than one-third of Washington's army was composed 
of Irishmen. The records exhibit thousands of Ulster 
Presbyterian names and thousands of Catholic Irish- 
men. Both classes had left Ireland for about the same 
reason, and for this good reason enlisted in force to 
fight against the English in the War of Independence. 

9 

The War of Independence made a profound impres- 
sion in Ireland. A genial corruptionist named Lord 
Harcourt had managed, after a long campaign, to get 
the "patriot" Henry Flood to take a job at £3500 a 
year; and Flood's secession made it possible for the 
Government to win a favorable, anti-American vote in 

184 



1 



The Abyss 

the Anglo-Irish parliament. But Chatham's phrase 
expressed the Irish feeling: "Ireland is with America to 
a man." "AU Ireland is America-mad," said Horace 
Walpole. The main pohtical advantage to Anglo- 
Ireland, however, came from the fact that America, 
in order to beat England, had appealed successfully to 
England's most dangerous enemy, France. 

By years of insistence on the popery of France, 
England had made of France the greatest bogy and 
bugbear in the world. Louis XIV, in addition, had 
shown the evil possibilities of French militarism. The 
Anglo-Insh, genuinely alarmed at the fact that there 
were no soldiers in Ireland, were glad to seize the oppor- 
tunity to arm in self-defense. It was impossible to 
get recruits in Ireland to fight the American colonies, 
but the Irish quickly raised 40,000 volunteers to defend 
their coasts from the invader. Having done so, they 
were in a somewhat better position to reason with the 
^*mother-country." 

The temper of Anglo-Ireland had not been improved 
by embargoes on export, to suit certain enterprising 
English hucksters; the victory of the Americans at 
Saratoga had additional stimulating value. And, with 
volunteers in arms, Grattan did all in his power to unite 
the Anglo-Irish and the native Irish. 

185 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

The feebleness of the British parliament in meeting 
this situation was combined with an executive's pri- 
vately bewailing the lack of a secret-service fund. 
Concessions were rushed to Anglo-Ireland and to native 
Ireland, in the hope of averting a declaration of inde- 
pendence. 

Carlisle, the lord lieutenant, informally told the 
English Government that the Irish could no longer 
be bamboozled. "It is beyond a doubt," he said, "that 
the practicability of governing Ireland by English laws 
is become utterly visionary. It is with me equally be- 
yond a doubt that Ireland may be well and happily 
governed by her own laws. It is, however, by no means 
so clear that if the present moment is neglected this 
country will not be driven into a state of confusion, 
the Qiid of which no man can foresee or limit." 

The Volunteers did not stand inactive. In 1779 
they had demanded free trade. At the foot of King 
William's statue in Dublin, opposite the houses of 
parliament, they had placarded two cannon, "Free 
Trade or This." In 1781, with free trade conceded, 
they assembled in Ulster. They now numbered 80,000 
men in arms. Early in 178S they held a convention 
at Dungannon under Lord Charlemont to formulate a 
political program. They insisted on the independence 

186 



The Abyss 

of the king, lords, and commons of Ireland. They 
passed two resolutions drafted by Grattan which re- 
vealed the great distance they had traveled toward 
nationalism. "We hold the right of private judgment 
in matters of religion to be equally sacred in others as 
in ourselves ; that as men, as Irishmen, as Christians, 
and as Protestants, we rejoice in the relaxation of the 
penal laws against our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, 
and that we conceive the measure to be fraught with 
the happiest consequences to the union and prosperity 
of the inhabitants of Ireland." 

Here was an expression of public opinion which even 
a privately-owned parliament could not ignore. "We 
know our duty to our sovereign, and are loyal; we 
know our duty to ourselves, and are resolved to be 
free." This moderation of the Volunteers, plus the pro- 
posed repeal of most of the penal laws, created an 
irresistible mood in Ireland. Lord Portland, the new 
viceroy, declared that it was no longer a question of 
the aroused parliament of Ireland. It was "the whole 
of this country." Fox insisted that there was only 
one tiling to do : "to meet Ireland on her own terms and 
give her everything she wanted in the way in which she 
seemed to wish for it." On January 22, 1783, Ireland 
— that is, colonial Ireland — enacted its perfect auton- 

187 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

omy, "hereby declared to be established and ascertained 
forever, and shall at no time hereafter be questioned 
or questionable." After this achievement, but before 
the parliament was reformed, the Volunteers ceased to 
have influence. 

"Ireland is a nation,'^ exulted Grattan in full emo- 
tion. "In that character I hail her, and bowing in 
her august presence, I say, "Esto perpetual'^ 

The "perpetua" parliament lasted about seventeen 
years* 




188 




CHAPTER VIII 

THE ANGI.O-IRISH PARLIAMENT 
1 

E now enter on a drama with four main con- 
flicting personages : the "Enghsh interest," the 
Anglo-Irish interest, the submerged native Irish, and 
the suppressed dissenters in Northeast Ulster. 

The drama falls into three acts. From 1782 to 
the French Revolution there was no serious social con- 
flict inside Ireland. The native Irish made no stir, 
neither did the dissenters. The chief struggle was 
that of the Anglo-Irish parliament to overcome Eng- 
lish jealousy and achieve commercial emancipation. 
But a great change in the mind and soul of Ireland 
took place with the French Revolution. From 1791 
to 1798 the drama became political, with the native 
Irish returning to the stage under the leadership of 
Protestant radicals and Presbyterian republicans. 
Against these radicals and republicans, with the Catho- 
lic masses in the rear, stood the "independent" parlia- 

189 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

ment and the English government. At first the Gov- 
ernment inclined to temporize. It planned to emanci- 
pate the Catholics. But with the aggressiveness of the 
radicals and republicans it soon changed its tactics. 
The radicals were disloyal. They desired French in- 
tervention. And gradually their society, the United 
Irishmen, became a revolutionary body, with the plan 
of establishing an Irish republic. It was this program, 
and the danger that it threatened to British imperial- 
ism so long as the native Irish had to be submerged, 
that decided Pitt to bring about the union of the Brit- 
ish and Anglo-Irish parliaments. 

The second act was mainly occupied with leading up 
to this union, in spite of the wishes of the Anglo-Irish. 
A great help in this direction was the revival of social 
and religious antagonism in Northeast Ulster, The 
educated Presbyterian was, as a rule, a republican, and 
desirous of a united Ireland. But in the rural districts 
there was latent rivalry and hostility among Catholics 
and Presbyterians, and out of this came the Defenders 
and the Orangemen. The Orangemen gave efficient aid 
to British imperial policy. When the United Irishmen 
had extended their organization, the Government pro- 
voked a leaderless rebellion, and then turned the Orange 
militia loose on the Southern peasantry. The fright- 

190 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

fulness was so great that the viceroy and the military 
commanders sickened at it, but it paved the way for 
the short third act in this chapter of history: the "in- 
dependent" parliament was destroyed. 

The "independent" parliament began, however, with- 
out any apprehension of English treachery. A feeling 
of intense gratitude to England pervaded it. One of 
its first acts was to vote £100,000 to the navy, and a 
contribution of ^0,000 men. The fact that these naval 
reciniits were sometimes countrymen knocked down and 
lashed and dragged on board the ships of his Majesty's 
fleet did not lessen the surging loyalty which filled the 
breasts of Grattan and his friends. These statesmen 
gloried, to tell the truth, in the strange sensation of 
legislative freedom. And because they felt free they 
felt generous, especially to the country which had 
freed them. 

One of the first results of this emotion was a body 
of the most amiable and enlightened municipal legisla- 
tion. To make Dublin into a handsome capital, the 
second city of the empire, was the ambition of the 
young parliament, and such public buildings as the 
custom-house and the viceregal lodge (of which the 

191 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

White House is a copy) were promptly undertaken. 
Public baths were opened, and charming town-houses 
were planned by the lords and the commons. The 
aristocratic Dublin of this period was lifted into being 
on a rising tide of hope and prosperity, and the reced- 
ing waves have left to Dublin a remarkable number of 
fine Georgian establishments. 

In this expansiveness a few important facts were 
allowed to lurk in the shade. The first of these was 
the exact nature of Ireland's "indepeiidence." All 
that the Anglo-Irish parliament had gained, in fact, 
was the right to frame its own bills. In England's 
hands it had left the whole executive apparatus. Thus 
the viceroy and the chief secretary were responsible 
not to Dublin but to London. The appointees of the 
Government all through the country were Enghsh ap- 
pointees. The office-holders looked to England ; so did 
the office-seekers. The bishoprics and good livings 
went by the favor of England. The house of lords 
was, in essence, England's creature. The English war 
office controlled the Irish army. Dublin Castle, in 
short, had not been transferred to the Anglo-Irish 
Ascendancy but remained the stronghold of English 
authority in Ireland. 

This was one structural oddity of Ireland's "inde- 

192 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

pendence." Another, of course, was the fact that the 
"nation" had, by the ingenuity of English rhetoric, 
come to consist of the Anglo-Irish minority, possibly a 
fifth of the people. One-tenth of the people, the Ulster 
Presbyterians, were still unpopular outsiders, while 
seven-tenths of the people, the native Irish, did not 
politically exist. 

The supreme one-fifth, however, could now dispense 
with the odium of brute force. England-in-Ir eland be- 
came the Nation. The great achievement of rule by 
public opinion, as the English conceived it, did not con- 
sist in installing the Anglo-Irish in Ireland by con- 
quest, confiscation, and legal tyranny. It consisted 
rather in the quiet art by which this Anglo-Irish party 
of force and theft and fraud and deceit was, without 
giving restitution, turned around into the dignified 
and of course "salutary" custodian of law and order. 
Within 150 years the native Irish had been reduced 
from their dominance in property and position to a 
state of servitude. In this servitude they sometimes 
showed a restless, reprehensible spirit. The wicked 
Irish, as solemn legalists and solemn historians saw 
them, had not that respect for the Law which one must 
have before one can be "entrusted" with self-govern- 
ment. If four-fifths of the people came in conflict with 

193 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

this one-fifth, their real offense was not their objection 
to the privileges of the fifth. Heaven forbid. It was 
their offense against the great body of noble principle 
on which this fifth was solidly squatting. The Anglo- 
Irish had pulled securely under them, and now warmly 
held, all the staple goods that were in sight. Here 
they were perched on these goods like the chancellor 
on his woolsack in the house of lords: the vulgar, 
greasy, useful commodity of earthly possessions became 
the base from which the ethics of law and order were 
laid down. And in due time the world could be trusted 
not to see the bag of wool on which these ethics were 
bolstered, but only to hear the deep inspiring organ- 
tones of Public Opinion, the Reign of Law, the political 
genius of England, Representative Government. 

3 

That this division of power was reasonable, in the 
Ireland of 178^, was held to be proved by the low 
condition of the native Irish. Owing to the bodily and 
economic damage and consequent social damage which 
had been inflicted on the native Irish by the penal laws, 
and their fixed place in the community as serfs, it 
seemed impossible in the current aristocratic view even 
to hold with them politically. They were politically 

194 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

beneath contempt. It was not until the French Revo- 
lution had gathered all the fumes and furies of the op- 
pressed into one terrific explosion, blowing a hole 
through the thickest of complacencies and showering 
molten rocks among the Higher Orders, that the minds 
of the higher orders were awakened in alarm. 

The degree to which the native Irish were actually 
impaired and degraded by the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries is important to estimate. One 
interesting witness in America in 1782, is de Crevecoeur, 
who wrote "Letters from an American Farmer": 

"Out of twelve families of emigrants of each country, 
generally seven Scotch will succeed, nine German, and 
four Irish. The Scotch are frugal and laborious, but 
their wives cannot work so hard as German women, 
who on the contrary vie with their husbands, and often 
share with them the severe toils of the field, which they 
understand better. They have therefore nothing to 
struggle against, but the common casualties of nature. 
The Irish do not prosper so well; they love to drink 
and to quarrel ; they are litigious, and soon take to the 
gun, which is the ruin of everything; they seem beside 
to labor under a greater degree of ignorance in hus- 
bandry than the others ; perhaps it is that their indus- 
try had less scope, and was less exercised at home. I 

195 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

have heard many relate how the land was parceled out 
in that kingdom; their ancient conquest has been a 
great detriment to them, bj oversetting their landed 
property. The lands possessed by a few are leased 
down ad infinitum, and the occupiers often pay five 
guineas an acre. The poor are worse lodged there 
than anywhere else in Europe ; their potatoes, which 
are easily raised, are perhaps an inducement to lazi- 
ness: their wages are too low, and their whisky too 
cheap." 

Was de Crevecceur biased .^^ One finds an even more 
painful and absolutely unguarded witness to the "detri- 
ment of conquest" in Wolfe Tone, the famous Irishman, 
who came to America in 1795. Tone was not en- 
chanted by the people of Philadelphia. "They are the 
most disgusting race," he observes in a private letter, 
"eaten up with all the vice of commerce and that vilest 
of all pride, the pride of the purse. In the country 
parts of Pennsylvania the farmers are extremely ignor- 
ant and boorish, particularly the Germans and their 
descendants, who abound. There is something, too, in 
the Quaker manners extremely unfavorable to any- 
thing like polished society, but of all the people I have 
met here the Irish are incontestably the most offensive. 
If you meet a confirmed blackguard you may be sure 

196 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

he is Irish. You will, of course, observe I speak of 
the lower orders. They are as boorish and ignorant 
as the Germans, as uncivil and uncouth as the Quakers, 
and as they have ten times more animal spirits than 
both they are njuch more actively troublesome. After 
all, I do not wonder at, nor am I angry with them. 
They are corrupted by their own execrable government 
at home and when they land here and find themselves 
treated like human creatures, fed and clothed, and 
paid for their labor, no longer flying from the sight of 
any fellow who is able to purchase a velvet collar to 
his coat, I do not wonder if the heads of the unfortu- 
nate devils are turned with such an unexpected change 
in their fortunes, and if their new-gotten liberty breaks 
out, as it too often does, into pettiness and insolence. 
For all this it is, perhaps scarcely fair to blame them — 
the fact is certain. 

"In Jersey, the manners of the people are extremely 
different; they seem lively and disengaged in compari- 
son, and that, among others, was one reason which 
determined me to settle in this State. 

"But if the manners of the Pennsylvanians be un- 
pleasant, their government is the best under heaven, 
and their country thrives accordingly." 

Three years later Wolfe Tone was to die for these 

197 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Irish people about whose manners he was so frank. 
That he saw them as he did, indicates the human 
groundwork of class distinction in this epoch. And 
what Tone could see in terms of cause and effect the 
Ascendancy saw simply as an unchangeable condition 
which called for and justified the policy of ascendancy. 



Hence the "independent" parliament began without i 
the least intention of enfranchising the Irish slaves. 

"The distrust of Roman Catholicism," says James \ 
Ford Rhodes in his history of the United States, "is a 
string that can be artfully played upon in an Anglo- \ 
Saxon community." It was the main string of Grat- \ 
tan's parliament. The Know-Nothing movement or i 
the later Ku-Klux Klan movement of the United States j 
expressed an acute but futile desire to make govern- ; 
ment a Protestant Anglo-Saxon monopoly. Govern- ; 
ment in Grattan's Ireland was in fact such a monopoly. ; 
"A Protestant king of Ireland; a Protestant parlia- I 
ment ; a Protestant hierarchy ; Protestant electors and \ 
Government ; the benches of justice, the army and the ! 
revenue, through all their branches and details Protes- : 
tant; and this system supported by a connection with ; 
the Protestant realm of England." This was the plat- ! 

198 i 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

form of the corporation of Dublin, which by law was 
exclusively Protestant. And the "liberal" attitude, as 
revealed by Henry Grattan, was this: "I love the 
Roman Catholic ; I am a friend to his liberty, but it is 
only inasmuch as his liberty is entirely consistent with 
your ascendancy, and an addition to the strength and 
freedom of the Protestant community." 

So the Protestant monopoly had to be iron-clad. "I 
love the colored folk," but "only inasmuch as entirely 
consistent with white ascendancy." What the law 
called the "common Popish enemy" did not appear to 
have a look-in. 

The Catholic gentry did not arouse any fears in the 
monopolists. By this time they were indescribably 
meek. They took a mouse-like interest in Irish arche- 
ology. They hastened to assert their extreme respect- 
ability and unswerving loyalty whenever they could. 
By the connivance of a smooth grafter named Helj 
Hutchinson they were permitted to creep through 
Trinity College, Dublin, and even to receive degrees. 
Their Protestant friends were willing to hold property 
for them in many cases, and thus to show that monop- 
oly is not always monstrous. But the Catholics of 
"respectability and position" had no leadership in 
them. Lord Kenmare was afraid of his shadow. So 

199 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

was Lord Fingall. Lord Dunsany turned Protestant 
though anxious to help his brethren. The eminent 
Father O^Leary was a secret pensioner of the crown. 

The lower classes of the populace, as Lecky describes 
them, were less spirited than the emigrants to America ; 
merely ignorant, turbulent, impoverished. "The Cath- 
olic gentry were as sensible as the Protestants of the 
utility of a law which kept arms out of the hands of 
the poorest, the most ignorant, the most lawless and 
riotous portion of the population." 

But the Protestant Ascendancy reckoned without the 
one uncontrollable factor in social affairs — the world 
circumstance of French Revolution. 



From 1782 to the French Revolution, as has been \ 

said, there was no serious social conflict inside Ireland. | 

In the breasts of radicals like Wolfe Tone the con- ; 

viction was forming that the "Revolution of 1782" ; 

was worthless. It simply "enabled Irishmen to sell, ! 

at a much higher price, their honor, their integrity, ! 

and the interests of their country; it was a revolution i 

i 
which, while at one stroke it doubled the value of every i 

borough-monger in the kingdom, left three-fourths of ! 

our countrymen slaves as it found them, and the gov- ] 

200 ; 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

emment of Ireland in the base and wicked and con- 
temptible hands who had spent their lives in degrad- 
ing and plundering her. Who of the veteran -enemies 
of the country lost his place or his pension? Who 
was called forth to station or office from the ranks of 
the opposition? Not one." 

Tliis was the latent feeling out of which the United 
Irishmen were to arise. But in immediate view there 
was Pitt's England with its restraints on Irish trade. 
The statesmen of the Anglo-Irish parliament were con- 
centrated on nothing so much as Ireland's economic 
development, and they fought with truly British spirit 
for a share in the trade of the world. At this distance 
it may seem like a pigmy striving ag'ainst a giant, but 
that was not the idea current among British traders. 
High, even prohibitive, duties were imposed on Irish 
manufactures intended for England, while Ireland was 
compelled to receive English manufactures at a low 
tariff. To remove these restraints and discriminations 
by arranging a treaty was the aim of the Anglo-Irish 
parliament. Pitt was not unwilling to make such a 
treaty, provided he could couple with it the promise 
of an Irish contribution to the empire. He did not 
deny that in the past English policy "had been that of 
excluding Ireland from the enjoyment and use of her 

201 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

own resources; to make that kingdom completely sub- 
servient to the opulence and interests of this country, 
without suffering them to share in the bounties of 
nature, in the industry of her citizens, or making them 
contribute to the general interests or strength of the 
empire." 

The proposed treaty, however, excited the most 
lively opposition in the new England of the industrial 
revolution. Ireland was believed to be a place of in- 
credibly low wages, incredibly cheap productiveness, 
incredibly dangerous rivalry. Pitt yielded to the pro- 
tests of the manufacturers and the attacks of the 
Whigs. He changed his whole policy. He sought te 
compel Ireland to play the ape to the British parlia- 
ment in return for some minor advantages. This new 
attempt at subordination the Anglo-Irish parliament 
shelved. It turned instead to home legislation. This, 
and the feeling of national confidence, helped Ireland 
toward an industrial revival. "The woolen manufac- 
ture showed some signs of reattaining its old pros- 
perity; the cotton manufacture grew at a very rapid 
pace, and in a few years attained considerable dimen- 
sions ; the progress of the linen manufacture was unin- 
terrupted; the brewing industry was reestablished in 
Ireland, without, however, in any way injuring its 

20S 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

flourishing' rivals, the distilleries; the glass manufac- 
ture became a serious rival to that of England; and, 
in spite of the greatly increased export of corn, the 
provision trade did not suffer, but, on the contrary, 
continued to expand." In his excellent "Economic 
History" Mr. O'Brien further shows that rents went 
up, wages increased, and the population rose from 
about 3,000,000 in 1782 to almost 5,000,000 in 1800. 

But this manifestation of Irish strength, with the 
French menace, was the very thing to alarm Britain. 
It was decided by Pitt as early as 1792 that the sim- 
plest solution for Britain would be to take away the 
Anglo-Irish parliament. He could do this all the bet- 
ter because he believed that the Union would safeguard 
"the British interest." 

Some concession to the Catholic majority, Pitt be- 
lieved, was absolutely necessary. In 1791 the plebeian 
elements had come to dominate the Catholic Committee. 
Under the secretaryship of Wolfe Tone, the democratic 
program of the French Revolution seemed to these 
native Irish the most inspiring doctrine in the world, 
and among the dissenters of Belfast the Catholics found 
their warmest supporters. 

The Anglo-Irish parliament, needless to say, was 
not Jacobin. It was thoroughly frightened by the 

203 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

prospect of any "democratic" advance in Ireland. In 
1792 Pitt was of the same mind. But believing he 
could achieve the Union he felt that the admission of 




the Catholics to a share of suffrage could not then 
be dangerous. "The Protestant interest, in point of 
power, property, and church establishment," he said 
in 1792 in a private letter, "would be secure, because 
the decided majority of the Supreme Legislature would 

204 



...._ ^i 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

necessarily be Protestant; and the great ground of 
argument on the part of the Catholics would be done 
away; as compared with the rest of the empire, they 
would be a minority." 

There was, besides, the conservative formula for 
Catholics. As against the Jacobins he thought that 
the ignorant, downtrodden Irish peasant would be a 
social bulwark. George III smiled on a delegation of 
loyal Catholics. "In the great struggle that had 
broken out Catholicism appeared the most powerful 
moral influence opposed to the Revolution." 

It was this sort of reasoning which led Pitt's hench- 
men to enfranchise the Catholic peasant in 1793. So 
long as the peasant voted as his landlord dictated 
(which he did), this enfranchisement really meant noth- 
ing. The gesture had only one disadvantage: Pitt 
could not explain to the Anglo-Irish parliament how 
little this liberalism meant without divulging his plan 
as to the Union. 

Not possessing the indispensable clue to Pitt's be- 
havior, the Anglo-Irish resented enormously his con- 
cession to the Catholics. Their own policy was dif- 
ferent. They aimed to resist the democratic influence 
of the French Revolution, to drive a wedge in between 
the lower order of Catholics and the Presbyterians of 

205 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Belfast, and to keep property on top by giving a place 
in parliament to the conservative, propertied Catholics. 
The United Irishmen, founded in Belfast in 1791, 
were not placated by Pitt's concession to the Catholic 
voter. They had a national as well as a democratic 
program, and they began an agitation for the uniting 
of the dissenters and the Catholics. Theirs was, at 
its start, a natural secession of the younger radicals — 
lawyers and writers — from the non-popular Anglo- 
Irish parliament, and at first their program was a 
broad civil and religious liberty. But with the Franco- 
English war of 1793 the leaders — ^Lord Edward Fitz- 
gerald, Arthur O'Connor, Thomas Addis Emmet, Oliver 
Bond, W. J. McNevin, and above all Wolfe Tone — 
made up their minds to follow America's example, in- 
voke French aid, declare war, and go republican. 

6 / 

Tliis development of policy was gradual. Before it 
was mature Pitt agreed that the appearance of virtue 
was desirable. He sent an honest liberal to Ireland 
as viceroy, Lord Fitzwilliam. 

To Grattan, who now realized that the Catholics 
must be placated and "emancipated," Fitzwilliam's was 
a splendid appointment. All the decent forces in 

206 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

Angle-Irish politics rallied to him. And above every- 
thing the reformers impressed on Fitzwilliam the hope- 
less corruption of the parliament under Fitzgibbon, a 
cynical bully who was Pitt's lord chancellor, and under 
Fitzgibbon's brother-in-law, John Beresford, who. was 
the head of the Tory machine. 

Poor Fitzwilliam, being honest, made up his mind 
that he could get nowhere unless he reformed parlia- 
ment. He had pledged himself not to touch the tru- 
culent Fitzgibbon, but he promptly removed John 
Beresford and two of Beresford's chief henchmen and 
spies. 

This created a remarkable situation. So long as 
the parliament was thoroughly corrupt, the inclusion 
of a few Lord Kenmares and Fingalls made no real 
difference. But if Catholic emancipation and parlia- 
mentary reform both occurred, Pitt's check-and-bal- 
ance policy was sure to miscarry. The recall of Fitz- 
wilHam was the only move left open to Pitt. 

Fitzwilliam's disastrous indiscretion is still the theme 
of British politicians. Lord Rosebery records that 
Fitzwilliam dismissed Beresford, "one of Pitt's con- 
fidential agents." "He made the unfortunate asser- 
tion that Beresford had been guilty of malversation" — 
in other words, was a crook. Lord Rosebery tells us 

SOT 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

that Fitzwilliam "seems to have been a man of generous 
sympathies and honest enthusiasm ; but not less wrong- 
headed than headstrong; absolutely devoid of judg- 
ment, reticence, and tact." 

In other words, he shared Edmund Burke's "living 
loathing of the Irish system of corruption." He was 
one British viceroy who took his honor seriously. He 
ventured to interfere with the perfect machinery which 
existed to cancel reform. 

Fitzwilliam's recall ended a complicated intrigue. It 
was the occasion of great popular lament in Ireland. 
It decided Pitt to abandon his connivance at Catholic 
emancipation. In 1791 it had been clear to the United 
Irishmen that "the chief support of the borough in- 
fluence in Ireland was the weight of English influence." 
This was now proved by the Anglo-Irish rejection of 
Catholic emancipation by 155 to 84. Pitt's spokes- 
men reversed their stand. They were now vigorously 
anti-Catholic. The bigotry of George III was sud- 
denly remembered. "The exclusion of Catholics from 
Parliament and the State," declared the chief secre- 
tary, "is necessary for the Crown and the Connection." 

**About 1795," Lecky mildly notes, "the persistent 
and successful opposition of the Government to reform 

£08 



...J 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 



5) 



made the United Irishmen for the first time disloyal. 

The republicanism of Belfast was now a pronounced 
factor in Irish politics. The Government threw a sop 
to the Catholic Church by endowing Maynooth, the 
seminary for priests. But the English Government 
did not disguise from itself the large task it had in 
hand. That task was to strengthen the Government 
machine inside parliament, to deprive Grattan's pious 
liberalism of all effectiveness, to multiply spies, detec- 
tives, and agents provocateurs, to build up a big army 
and a big militia, to inflame religious prejudice where- 
ever possible, and to provoke and quell a rebellion. 
After the rebellion, which was in everybody's mind, it 
Vrould be unnecessary to force the Anglo-Irish parlia- 
ment into a union at the point of the sword. It would 
be sufficient to spend several million pounds and lavish 
a few dozen peerages. 

Against this policy there was only the agility and 
daring of the United Irishmen. When Wolfe Tone 
was allowed to leave the country in 1795, he found 
Belfast full of the most warm-hearted and patriotic 
Irishmen. Before he sailed from Belfast he and Neil- 

209 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

son and Russell and McCracken and Simms met on a 
hill in the neighborhood and "took a solemn obligation 
never to desist in our efforts until we have subverted 
the authority of England over our country and as- 
serted our independence." 

Tone had traveled the full distance along the road 
on which Swift and his fellows had only set their foot. 
He was, without an illusion, the advocate of the native 
Irish. Born in Dublin the same year as Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald, 1763, he was the son of a farmer-coach- 
maker of English stock who lived in Kildare. His 
mother's name was Lamport. Wolfe Tone, Theobald 
Wolfe Tone in full, was a man of the most blithe and 
spirited temperament, of deep political sense, resource, 
and courage. He was the most notable Irishman of 
his time. His autobiography is one of the most fas- 
cinating autobiographies in the English language, dis- 
tinguished as much by its color and gaiety as by its 
thrilling theme. From his first negotiations with citi- 
zen Adet, the French minister in Philadelphia, to his 
negotiations with the French Government in 1796, he 
had nothing to rely on except his own initiative, con- 
fidence, and address. Monroe, then American minister 
to France, received him warmly. He advised him not 
to bother with "subalterns." He sent him straight to 

210 



The Anglo-Irish ParliamcTit 

Camot, and Tone undertook the audacious task of 
procuring an army to free Ireland. 

After immense effort an expedition under Lazare 
Hoche sailed from Brest December 15, 1796, Tone ac- 
companying it as a French adjutant-general. 

The expedition was under the orders of Admira,! 
Bouvet while at sea. It had taken Hoche several 
months to get the forty-three ships he needed for 
15,000 men, artillery, and munitions for thousands of 
Irishmen. In the fogs that enveloped the sea after 
leaving Brest the force split into three divisions. 
Hoche's ship never reached Bantry, but thirty-five 
ships of the expedition came within sight of Bantry 
Bay. A tremendous wind, blowing unceasingly from 
December 20 to 27, made it difficult for them to land, 
though a more daring commander than Grouchy could 
not have been found. Of the forty-three ships thirty- 
five returned safely, five were wrecked, and six were 
captured by the English. The English fleet never 
came out to engage this expedition, but Bouvet was 
dismissed by the French for sailing home too soon. 
Grouchy, who took the command in the absence of 
Hoche, was investigated for not making a landing, but 
the investigation cleared him. Wolfe Tone himself 
said "the winds ruined us." 

211 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

8 

While Tone remained in France to renew his efforts, 
the situation in Ireland became more strained. For 
some time in Armagh and elsewhere in the North there 
had been friction between the Presbyterian and Catho- 
lic rural workers. In Armagh, where the Catholics 
were in the minority, they called themselves Defenders 
and the aggressors called themselves Peep-o'-day Boys. 
A clash between these two bodies in September, 1795, 
occurred at a place called the Diamond. Though said 
to be the aggressors, the Catholics had more than 
twenty of their number killed. After their victory 
that evening the non-Catholics formed themselves into 
a new body called Orangemen, after William of Orange, 
"the conqueror of the Catholics." 

These Orangemen went on the war-path. "A ter- 
rible persecution of Catholics," Lecky declares, "im- 
mediately followed. The animosities between the lower 
orders of the two religions, which had long been little 
bridled, burst out afresh, and after the battle of the 
Diamond the Protestant rabble of the county of 
Armagh, and of part of the adjoining counties, deter- 
mined by continuous outrages to drive the Catholics 
from the country. Their cabins were placarded, or, 

212 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

as it was termed, 'papered/ with the words 'To hell or 
Connacht,' and if the occupiers did not at once aban- 
don them, they were attacked at night by an armed 
mob." 

The Government was soon being assured that the 
Orangemen were full of the "strongest spirit of loy- 
alty." This spirit of loyalty was shared by many 
local magistrates, who gave the Orangemen a free 
hand. And Dublin Castle did nothing to keep the out- 
rages from flourishing. A revival of bigotry and 
hatred was just the feeling to counteract that rap- 
prochement between Catholics, Protestants, and Pres- 
byterians for which the United Irishmen were striving. 
"Loyalists" of the Orange type did not wait long to 
make this plain, and there were plenty of Government 
officials to listen to them. The Government, Grattan 
declared repeatedly in parliament, had one law for 
the Defenders, another for the Orangemen. He asked 
pointedly how it happened that with 40,000 soldiers 
and summary laws, they could not reduce Armagh to 
order. "I cannot but think," he stated flatly, "the 
audacity of the mob arose from a confidence in the 
connivance of Government. Under an administration 
sent here to defeat a Catholic Bill, a Protestant mob 
very naturally conceives itself a part of the state." 

S13 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

In one sense this extended and extreme persecution of 
the Catholics helped the United Irishmen. It turned 
thousands of "Defenders," North and South, into their 
order. The Catholic militia, according to the Gov- 
ernment, could no longer be depended on. But the 
very essence of the United Irishman policy was the 
transcending of religious division. "To subvert the 
tyranny of our execrable Government," said Tone, "to 
break the connection with England, the never-failing 
source of our political evils, and to assert the inde- 
pendence of my country — these were my objects. To 
unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the mem- 
ory of our past dissensions, and to substitute the com- 
mon name of Irishmen in place of the denomination of 
Protestant, Catholic, and dissenter — these were my 
means." The enormous enrolment of Catholics, pre- 
viously apathetic, was loudly welcomed; but even 
though the Defenders were excommunicated by their 
church, their keenest emotion was not that disciplined 
policy which inspired the United men. 

From their spies in the ranks of the United Irish- 
men — Leonard McNally in particular — and from the 
proprietor of the "Freeman's Journal," Francis Hig- 
gins, the Government judged the time had come to 
enroll a loyal yeomanry. This yeomanry was, in effect, 

214 



i 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

the deliberate enrolment of Orangemen against Catho- 
lie. And this enlistment of Orange enthusiasts proved 
to be exceedingly efficacious, once the policy of disarm- 
ing and coercing the country was accepted. 



9 

So began the campaign which preceded and pro- 
duced the actual rising of 1798. 

Georg Brandes, the Danish man of letters, accu- 
rately sums up the action of the yeomanry in his 
essay on Robert Emmet. "The Government formed a 
force of Protestant constabulary, 37,000 strong. 
These troops were permitted, under the pretense of 
searching for concealed weapons, to capture, torture, 
and put to death any unfortunate person whom an 
enemy, or any ruffian whatever, chose to accuse of 
suspicious behavior. Hundreds of unoffending people, 
who were guilty of no other offense than professing 
the creed of their fathers, were flogged until they were 
insensible, or made to stand upon one foot on a pointed 
stake, or were half hanged, or had the scalp torn from 
their heads by a pitched cap. MiHtia and yeomanry, 
as well as the regular troops, were billeted in private 
houses ; and this billet appears to have been construed 

215 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

as an unlimited license for robbery, devastation, rav- 
ishment, and in case of resistance, murder. It was 
boasted' by officers of rank that within certain large 
districts no home had been left undefiled ; and upon its 
being remarked that the sex must have been very com- 
plying, the reply was that 'the bayonet removed all 
squeamishness.' " 

Grattan had foreseen the violence of the Govern- 
ment. He made one final attack in parliament, pointed 
out that more than 200 of the 300 members were in 
bond, reminded the Government that its own rottenness 
had fomented the United Irishmen, and refreshed its 
memory concerning the American war. "Suppose you 
succeed, what is your success ? A military government ! 
A perfect despotism ! . . . a Union ! But what may be 
the ultimate consequence of such a victory? A separa- 
tion!" He made his last appeal, won 30 votes out of 
147, and walked out of the parliament with his fol- 
lowers. 

The Government expected a French invasion as well 
as a rising. Hence the Government policy of terror- 
ism. Tone had been negotiating with the Dutch before 
their defeat at the Battle of Camperdown. Now, since 
Hoche had died of consumption, he was dealing with 
the lukewarm Bonaparte. Through McNally and other 

216 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

agents Dublin Castle was aware that Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Connor were simply biding 
their time. In this period of apprehension and alarm a 
new commander-in-chief came to Ireland, Sir Ralph 
Abercromby, a Scot of high reputation. He found the 
loyalists semi-hysterical and the military demoralized. 
He determined, in Lecky^s words, "to put a stop to 
the scandalous outrages which were constantly occur- 
ring, if not under the direct prompting, at least with 
the tacit connivance of Government officials." The 
burning of houses in reprisal was one of the practices 
which Abercromby had to condemn. In February, 
17985 he announced without disguise that the army 
was "in a state of licentiousness which must render it 
formidable to every one but the enemy." This open 
statement created an uproar, and in private he told his 
own relations that "within these twelve months every 
crime, every cruelty that could be committed by Cos- 
sacks or Calmucks has been transacted here. , . . 
Houses have been burned, men murdered, others half 
hanged." Abercromby resigned, and "took away the 
last faint chance of averting a rebellion." A general 
named Lake, with an exceedingly bad record, was given 
Abercromby's place and within a month had driven 
the people to revolt. 

217 



' The Story of the Irish Nation 

10 

The United Irishmen planned and desired an insur- 
rection, to be launched May 23. They claimed to have 
279,896 men enlisted and armed, and Lord Edward 
Pitzgerald was to act as commander-in-chief. The 
actual plans were not in the Government's hands, how- 
ever, until Thomas Reynolds, one of the inner circle, 
turned informer and enable^ the Government to arrest 
fifteen of the leaders in March. Thomas Addis Emmetj 
Sweetman, Jackson, and W. J. McNevin, were arrested 
at the same time. It was following these arrests that 
"martial law and free quarters" were proclaimed, lead- 
ing to the incidents narrated by Brandes and pro- 
voking the country to a leaderless rising. 

The Tyrone Militia, the North Cork Militia, the 
Welsh and two Hessian regiments showed what Orange- 
men and aliens could do among the popish enemy. 
"More than one victim died under the lash," records 
Lecky, "and the terror it produced was to many even 
worse than the punishment. Gordon mentions a case 
which came under his own notice, of a laboring man who 
dropped dead through simple fear. Another case is re- 
lated of a man in Dublin, who, maddened by the pain 

218 



The Anglo-Irish Pafdiament 

of the pitched cap, sprang into the LifFey and ended at 
once his sufferings and his life. In a third case, which 
occurred at Drogheda, a man who had undergone 500 
lashes in order to compel him to reveal some concealed 
arms, fearing that his fortitude would be overcome, 
pretended that arms were concealed in a particular 
garden, and availed himself of the few moments of free- 
dom which he thus obtained, to cut his throat. Flogging 
to extort confessions appears to have been nowhere 
more extensively or more successfully practised than in 
Dublin itself, under the very eyes of the Government, 
and under the direction of men who were closely con- 
nected with it." 

During these happenings the United Irishmen had 
suffered further betrayals. Higgins of the "Freeman's 
Journal" secured a £1000 bribe for one Magan, who 
secured Lord Edward's arrest in Thomas Street on 
May 17. He had been "on the run" for two months. 
He was lying on his bed when Major Swan and Captain 
Ryan came to arrest him. With a dagger he fought 
against these two men, mortally wounded Ryan, and 
himself received a pistol-wound of which he died three 
weeks later. Lord Edward was described by a French 
agent who negotiated with him as a man incapable of 

219 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

falsehood or perfidy, frank, energetic, and likely to 
be a useful and devoted instrument, but "with no ex- 
perience or extraordinary talent." He was thirty-five 




years old at the time of his death, the last of the 
Geraldines to risk his whole being and fortune in 
despair of the methods of the English in Ireland. 

An army officer Armstrong, urged by Lord Castle- 
reagh not to indulge "in delicate scruples," dined in- 

220 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

timately with the family of two men named Sheares, 
sons of a Cork banker. Armstrong obtained the ma- 
terial for a state trial. John Sheares and his brother 
Henry were defended by John Philpot Curran. They 
were found guilty in seventeen minutes. Lecky asserts 
that John Sheares was "a man of ability and great 
energy, a reckless and dangerous fanatic." On July 
4, 1798, the day he was condemned, he denied with 
dignity and simplicity the main accusation which 
Lecky's history complacently repeats. He was accused 
of urging that no quarter be given to the enemy. "If 
any acquaintance of mine can believe that I could 
utter a recommendation of giving no quarter to a 
yielding and unoffending foe, it is not the death I am 
about to suffer I deserve: no punishment could be 
adequate to such a crime." He turned from this to 
urge the court to give his brother time to arrange his 
affairs. "In short, my lords, to spare your feelings 
and my own, I do not pray that I should not die," but 
that the brother be granted a short respite. The 
respite was not granted until next day, when the man 
who brought it arrived too late. James Sheares had 
already been hanged before the mob in Green Street, 
and his head cut off, and held up to the mob by the 
hangman, crying, "Behold the head of a traitor." 

221 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

11 

The concerted rising was destroyed by the arrests 
at the center, but it broke out in Ulster and Leinster 
in spite of everything. Henry Jo}^ McCracken, a 
spirited friend of Wolfe Tone's, led the attack on 
Antrim. His force of 4000 was repulsed, he was 
captured, tried, and hanged in Belfast. His sister 
walked with him to the place of execution. Forty years 
later she said of her beloved brother that she would 
not have had him do otherwise. Henry Munroe in 
Down was defeated at Ballynahinch, and executed in 
Lisbum. In these Ulster battles the insurgents were 
mainly Presbyterian, led by men of substance who had 
long been connected with the United Irishmen. In 
Leinster there were scattered engagements in Kildare, 
Carlow, and Meath, and a massacre on the Curragh of 
insurgents about to surrender. 

The war in Wexford was not premeditated. Lord 
Mountnorris had been busy securing oaths and protes- 
tations of allegiance before the arrival of the North 
Cork Militia. It was their activities, especially the 
burning of the Catholic chapel at Boulavogue, and 
Father John Murphy's house and twenty farm-houses 
near-by, which started the rising in Wexford. 

2£2 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 



At Oulart Hill and Vinegar Hill the country people 
collected in huge numbers, aroused to extraordinary 



An, Iristi Insurgent 
of 1798 




passion and activity by the recent work of the yeo- 
manry. Father John Murphy, Father Michael Mur- 
phy, Father Philip Roche, and Father Keams led in 

223 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

a number of engagements which included the capture 
of Enniscorthy, Wexford, Gorey. At Vinegar Hill 
General Lake with 15,000 troops finally overcame the 
magnificently courageous but unorganized bodies of 
leaderless and badly armed insurgents. 

"Under no military control, undisciplined, and 
practically unled; goaded to revolt by intolerable bar- 
barity, they flew to arms, without preparation, as a 
desperate resource." So Dr. Sigerson has summed up 
1798 in Wexford. It is admitted in General Lake's 
biography that it was, unhappily, the misconduct of 
the militia and yeomanry which led to the insurrection. 

Cornwallis, the viceroy, was "frightened and 
ashamed'' at "the numberless murders that are hourly 
committed by our people without any process or ex- 
amination whatever. The yeomanry are in the style 
of the Loyalists in America, only much more numerous 
and powerful, and a thousand times more ferocious. 
These men have saved the country, but they now take 
the lead in rapine and murder. The Irish militia, 
with few officers, and those chiefly of the worst kind, 
follow closely on the heels of the yeomanry in murder 
and every kind of atrocity, and the Fencibles take a 
share, although much behindhand with the others. The 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

feeble outrages, burnings, and murders which are still 
committed by the Rebels, serve to keep up the sangui- 
nary disposition on our side; and as long as they fur- 
nish a pretext for our parties going in quest of them, 
I see no prospect of amendment. 

"The conversation of the principal persons of the 
country all tend to encourage this system of blood, 
and the conversation even at my table, where you will 
suppose I do aU I can to prevent it, always turns on 
hanging, shooting, burning, etc., etc., and if a priest 
has been put to death the greatest joy is expressed by 
the whole company. So much for Ireland and my 
wretched situation." 

In August, 1798, after the execution of Bond, Byrne, 
Neilson, and others, and the imprisonment of Thomas 
Addis. Emmet and McNevin, a small French expedition 
landed at Killala in Mayo, under General Humbert. At 
Castlebar the crown troops that were so ruthless in 
Wexford celebrated their valor by running away from 
Humbert in a battle known as the "Races of Castlebar." 
Lord CornwaUis with 15,000 men finally took Humbert's 
surrender at Longford. Matthew Tone and Bartholo- 

225 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

mew Teeling, who had come with him, were executed, as 
well as five hundred captured Irishmen. The French 
soldiers were treated as prisoners of war. 

In September another futile expedition came from 
France. It comprised 3000 men, with Wolfe Tone on 
board the HocTie. At the entrance to Lough Swilly, 
October 10, he was urged by his French associates to 
leave in their sloop. He absolutely refused. "Shall I 
leave the French to fight the battles of my country?'* 
he asked. A bitter naval battle took place between 
the battleship Hoclie and four British vessels. For 
six hours the Hoclie fought, with Wolfe Tone com- 
manding a battery and taking his part "like a lion.'* 

The Hoclie was eventually beaten and Tone was 
one of the prisoners of war. He was invited with the 
other French officers to breakfast with the Earl of 
Cavan. At table he was recognized by an old Trinity 
College mate, Sir George Hill, and by that gentleman 
he was handed over to the authorities. On November 
10, he was put on trial before a court-martial. 

He admitted his hostility. "From my earliest 
youth," he said to his judges, "I have regarded the 
connection between Ireland and Great Britain as the 
curse of the Irish nation, and felt convinced that while 
it lasted this country could never be free or happy. 

226 



i 



The Anglo-Irish Parliament 

My mind has been confirmed in this opinion by the 
experience of every succeeding year, and the conclu- 
sions which I have drawn from every fact before my 
eyes.'^ 

He asked to be shot. He was refused. He was 
ordered to be hanged on November 12. On November 
11 he cut his throat with a pen-knife. He lived till 
November 19. 

Of few Irish leaders is there such a full personal 
memorial as Wolfe Tone has left in his autobiography. 
From this book, and from the history of his time, we 
can judge his character and his disposition, his philos- 
ophy and his practice, his hopes and dreams. In its 
personal vividness it is an alluring story. His love- 
story is one of the most charming ever recorded. His 
picture of Paris in 1796 has drawn warm admiration 
from so severe a critic as Lecky. But it is for the 
qualities of mind that Wolfe Tone brought to Irish 
strategy that he is most to be remembered. Wolfe 
Tone was not a sentimentalist or a theorist, neither 
was he a callous realist. He was a candid, critical, 
imaginative, and resolute man who set himself about 
the complicated and heroic task of freeing Ireland. He 
came nearer complete success than any other man in 
modem times. 

227 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Barry O'Brien quotes one interesting witness. 
"Wolfe Tone," said the Duke of Wellington, "was a 
most extraordinary man, and his history is the most 
curious history of those times. With a hundred guineas 
in his pocket, unknown and unrecommended, he went to 
Paris in order to overturn the British government in 
Ireland. He asked for a large force, Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald for a small force. They listened to Tone.'* 

With the death of Tone the insurrection of 1798 

expired. "In a cause like this," he had said, "success 

is everything. Washington succeeded, and Kosciusko 

failed." But his tenacity, his clarity, his ardor, his 

courage, remained to inspire his countrymen. And 

it could never be forgotten that he had unselfishly and 

unreservedly espoused the cause of the people. With 

all his deep and fine seriousness he had, moreover, a 

touching simplicity. At thirty-three he wrote, "I will 

endeavor to keep myself as pure as I can, as to the 

means. As to the end, it is sacred — the liberty and 

independence of my country first, the establishment of 

my wife and our darling babies next, arid last, I hope, 

a well-earned reputation." 

He was thirty-five years old when he died. 

£28 



CHAPTER IX 

THE UNION AND THE REPEAL MOVEMENT 



THE rebellion of '98 was at last suppressed," 
obserres Lecky, "and the ministers determined 
to avail themselves of the opportunity to annihilate the 
Irish parliament." 

One main reason for this annihilation, curiously 
enough, was the pressure of the non-represented Catho- 
lics. It was no longer pretended by English statesmen 
that the native Irish could be kept out of parliament 
forever. A century of servitude had been forced on 
them, but the French Revolution had stirred their numb 
political instincts, and the day of crass penal laws 
was at an end. To admit them fully, however, was to 
make parliament popular and national. The British 
or English governing class could not tolerate the idea 
of a national Ireland. Seriously lacking in foresight 
and obsessed with No Popery, the cabinet could imagine 
no better way to dispose of Ireland than to smother it 
in a union. 

229 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Wolfe Tone had long seen these underlying realities. 
He knew, and the United Irishmen knew, that England 
had no policy except to submerge, if necessary destroy, 
the Irish nation. Hence he and his companions had 
worked hard to organize the Catholic Irish. Through 
Edmund Burke's son Richard (a "puppy"), John 
Keogh, the leading man of the Catholic commercial 
classes, and others, every effort had been made to stir 
the will of the masses. The Government, on its side, 
had played two clever counter-games. One was to 
keep the ascendancy of the Protestants an irritated 
issue, both for the Anglo-Irish and the Orangemen. 
The other was to buy off the more genteel and respect- 
able Catholics. Among those "Shoneen" Catholics, 
Wolfe Tone had moved as a national diplomat, and 
with great success; but the failure of the insurrection 
of 1798 gave the Government the trump it was look- 
ing for. 

That insurrection was a Government asset. It be- 
came an asset the moment it was given the aspect of 
mob violence. By removing the leaders at the last 
minute, having previously quartered the soldiers on 
the people to search for arms, torture, flog, rape, and 
burn houses and chapels, the right mood of insane 
desperation had not been so hard to produce in 

230 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

Leinster. Honest Abercromby was a hindrance, but 
Abercrombj was deleted. "The fact is incontro- 
vertible," Lord Holland said, "the people of Ireland 
were driven into resistance, which possibly they medi- 
tated before, by the free quarters and the excesses of 
the soldiers, which were such as are not permitted 
in civilized warfare, even in an enemy's country." 

Nothing played better into the hands of the English 
than the fact that priests led the people in Wexford. 
Another valuable item was a sequence of atrocities in 
Wexford, on both sides, by which it appeared that a 
wicked Native Mutiny was threatening the Protestant 
ascendancy. In the medley of passions — passions of 
pride and property — which this phantasm excited, the 
Government triumphed heavily. The United Irishmen's 
controlled revolution had been turned into a brawl 
and a shambles. It had made Ireland a slaughter- 
house. Fifty thousand, gentle and simple, had been 
killed. The Government, which had created a White 
Terror, retained the prestige of dominance. 

But the struggle had forced England to shed one 
moral garment after another. It was now stripped to 
the sheer buff of brutality. The English executive in 
Dublin Castle had used the Anglo-Irish parliament 
as its bailiff. It had inflamed the feeling of ascendancy 

231 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

to a pitch that made CathoHc emancipation unthink- 
able. The Irish "nation" as conceived by Grattan 
and as lovingly described by Judge Morris — "a free 
parliament, and a powerful landed gentry, the respected 
superiors of a contented peasantry" — was not likely 
to sprout out of the graves of Father John and Father 
Michael Murphy. The insurrection being well lost by 
the native Irish, it was necessary to twist this victory 
against the "independent" parliament. 

So far the Ascendancy had traveled with the English. 
They looked on the "rebellion" as a piece of peasant 
devilishness. But this did not mean that they wanted 
parliamentary union with Britain. In Ireland there 
was no public opinion in favor of the Union. 

The Presbyterians of Ulster had lost much of their 
fervor as United Irishmen, owing to the bitterness of 
the Orangemen, the enlisting of yeomanry, the "reli- 
gious" atrocities in Wexford. But what was the use 
of ascendancy unless one had an Ascendancy parlia- 
ment? "On this great question there was a perfect 
agreement between the more liberal Protestants who 
followed the banner of Grattan and Ponsonby, and the 

232 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

Orangemen who represented the fiercest and most in- 
tolerant form of Protestant ascendancy." The Catho- 
lics, likewise, were unfavorable. Outside the bishops, 
the rising traders, and the gentry, the masses were 
once more huddled into political limbo, but their feeling 
was fixedly opposed. The legal profession, still mainly 
Protestant, was scathingly against the Union. Those 
who alone were ready to end Grattan's parliament were 
the absentees, the English officials, and their political 
henchmen. 

On their side, however, were all the resources of the 
state. The carrying of the Union was a question of 
marshaling resources. The soldiers employed by the 
Government during the insurrection now broke up 
meetings. The presenting of petitions was at first 
illegal. Castlereagh took with pleasure to the business 
of manufacturing loyal petitions, discharging men like 
Sir John Parnell who refused to pledge themselves for 
the Union. He saw the Presbyterians and held out a 
Government donation to them. At Maynooth in 1799 
the four archbishops and six bishops "agreed," as 
Lecky puts it, "to accept with gratitude the payment 
of the priests, and at the same time to grant the Gov- 
ernment a right of veto over all future episcopal ap- 
pointments as a guarantee of their loyalty." Castle- 

2SS 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

reagh shrank from no promise or no connivance. With 
Cornwallis, the viceroy, to help him, "the whole patron- 
age of the Government was steadily, profusely, and 
exclusively employed in its favor.*^ 

Cornwallis did not relish the job. As viceroy he was 
compelled to traffic with unwashed and shameless graft- 
ers, and he showed his "sterling splendor of character'* 
by holding his nose with one hand as he bribed with 
the other. "The political jobbing of this country 
gets the better of me," he said. "It has ever been the 
wish of my life to avoid this dirty business, and I am 
now involved in it beyond all bearing." "I despise 
and hate myself every hour, for engaging in such dirty 
work, and am supported only by the reflection, that 
without an Union the British empire must be dissolved." 

The bluff, hearty, honest Englishman is liable to 
such moods. Like the Second Murderer in "Richard 
III," Cornwallis was frequently attacked by the "holy 
humor." As the honest murderer lamented, "some 
certain dregs of conscience are yet within me ... It 
makes a man a coward; a man cannot steal, but it ac- 
cuseth him; a man cannot swear, but it checks him! a 
man cannot lie with his neighbor's wife, but it detects 
him: 'tis a blushing shamefast spirit, that mutinies in 
a man's bosom ; it fills one full of obstacles ..." 

234 



...J 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

These obstacles, so commendable in a "frank, honor- 
able, soldier-like" Second Murderer of Cornwallis's 
type, did not affect Castlereagh. Castlereagh had no 
humors. He was Robert Stewart by name, afterward 
Lord Londonderry. He slew the parliament, as Lecky 
says, "with a quiet, businesslike composure; nor is there 
the slightest indication that it caused him a momentary 
uneasiness." He was perfectly ready to use the coarse 
word "corruption." He sent to Pitt for raw cash 
with which to bribe the Press. McKenna, the Catholic 
scribe, was a useful tool. Like a strong-framed fellow 
"that respects his reputation," Castlereagh planned 
to drown the Anglo-Irish parliament in a malmsey- 
butt of bribery. A cool First Murderer, he had his 
high moral reason for the murder. It was left to 
Comwallis to moan: 

A bloody deed, and desperately despatch'd ! 
How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands 
Of this most grievous murder. 

It was indeed a bloody deed, but the filth of it was 
outspokenly excused on the grounds of imperialism. 

As the measure advanced in the Anglo-Irish parlia- 
ment, the Protestant "patriots" flung themselves in 
front of it like fanatics before Juggernaut. At first the 
wheels of the machine were clogged with these ardent 

235 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

lovers of legislative freedom. But more grease was 
applied. Twentj-eight fresh Irish peerages were be- 
stowed on the kind of people who believed and stated 
that "on the Continent Rank is inestimable, and even 
at home it is no small addition." For £1,260,000, 
eighty rotten boroughs were bought out, and charged to 
the Irish national debt. More than sixty favorable 
votes were registered by new office-holders. Liberal 
annuities, to be charged against Ireland, were prom- 
ised right and left. Grattan, dragged from his sick- 
bed, spoke for two hours against the slaying of his 
own creation. "The thing he proposes to buy is what 
cannot be sold — ^liberty." Petitions, especially from 
the North, at last were issued; twenty-seven counties 
and 107,000 signatures against, and 3000 signatures 
not against. But Dublin Castle, plus its favors, ob- 
tained 158 votes to 113 and overpowered Anglo-Ire- 
land. 

3 

No whitewash has ever covered up the means by 
which the Union was carried. "The corruption," Lord 
Rosebery admits, "was black, hideous, horrible; re- 
volting at any time, atrocious when it is remembered 
that it was a nation's birthright that was being sold" 
— and bought. As a former British premier, however, 

236 



The JJmon and the Repeal Movement 

he defends it. He points out that "the purchase of 
that parliament was habitual and invariable." Was 
it not better, he asks with Castlereagh, once and for all 
to end it, than "to go on in the vile old way, hiring, 
haggling, jobbing, from one dirty day to another, from 
one miserable year to another?" 

To transplant the legislature to England, rather 
than to transplant the executive to Ireland, was the 
masterly statesmanship of the Union. Rosebery ex- 
plains it and excused it as a war measure. Napoleon 
threatened England. How was England to know that 
Ireland was "loyal?" No matter how loyal Anglo-Ire- 
land might seem, the ghost of the conquered nation 
could at any moment arise. To England's statesmen 
^'struggling in a great war, unity and simplicity of 
government were everything." Thus Pitt enforced on 
England and on a preoccupied British legislature the 
task of handling Ireland not as a partner-nation, but 
as a subject-nation. Pitt consecrated this imperial 
idea of Ireland a subject-nation, to be ruled in what- 
ever way suited the game of British politics, working 
especially on the class and religious dissensions in Ire- 
land. 

This masterpiece of political genius was concocted 
under the influence of profound English snobbishness. 

SS7 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

It not only ignored the commercial interests of Anglo- 
Ireland, which had thrived under the parliament. It 
also patronized the Anglo-Irish and despised the na- 
tive Irish. This condescension was, however, soon to be 
converted into bitter race animosity, under the provo- 
cative personality of Daniel O'Connell. 



The act itself went into effect January 1, 1801. It 
united Great Britain and Ireland "for ever'^ as the 
United Kingdom; gave Ireland thirty-two peers in 
the house of lords, four of them churchmen and 
twenty-eight of them elected for life by all the Irish 
peers; fixed one hundred members as Ireland's perma- 
nent representation in the house of commons ; solemnly 
and fundamentally joined the Irish Protestant Church 
with the English as "the Established Church of Eng- 
land and Ireland'^; arranged a customs union; decided 
that Ireland contribute two-seventeenths of the com- 
mon expenditure; that any excess of revenue should be 
applied on Ireland's national debt; that if Ireland^s 
debt became as great as two-seventeenths of the Eng- 
lish, the exchequers could be amalgamated and taxation 

238 



The Union amd the Repeal Movement 

made equal, subject to whatever remission Ireland's 
case required. 

The Irish viceroy remained, with the separate ex- 
chequer, separate judiciary, and separate administra- 
tion. 

The administration continued to be definitely alien- 
ated from the native Irish all through the nineteenth 
century. 

In 1802 Lord Redesdale, chancellor at £10,000 a 
year, declared that Ireland must be kept as a "gar- 
risoned country." The administration became the 
"garrison." Of the viceroys, chief secretaries, and 
under-secretaries up to 1906, five out of 157 were 
Catholic and "about sixteen only in touch with Irish 
public opinion." So said Barry O'Brien in his detailed 
book on Dublin Castle. When he wrote in 1909, three 
of the seventeen high court judges, eight of the twenty- 
one county court judges, five of the thirty-seven county 
inspectors of the police, sixty-two of the 202 district 
inspectors, 1805 of the 5518 ordinary justices of the 
peace, and eight of the sixty-eight privy councilors 
were Catholic Irish. The rest were "garrison." How- 
ever "well-meaning" the British Government became, 
it never became so well-meaning as to allow the native 

239 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

and nationalist Irish to have an influential share in 
their own Government. 



In the first somber years of the Union there came 
a flaming epilogue to 1798. Among the many Dublin 
professional men — ^Whitley Stokes, McNevin, Dowdall 
— who were devoted to Ireland, no family was so spirited 
as Dr. Emmet's. He was state physician to the vice- 
regal court, of English and Cromwellian stock, a man 
of swinging, original mind, who kept his household in 
Stephen^s Green in a ferment of unconventional discus- 
sion. His able son Thomas Addis Emmet had been 
imprisoned in Scotland since 1798, but had been al- 
lowed to go to the Continent after peace was declared 
in 1801. Robert Emmet, born in 1778, entered Trinity 
College early. He was a warm friend of Thomas 
Moore, to whose cherubic appearance his own lean, 
dry, wiry person, with his pock-marked face, was in 
great contrast. It was typical of Trinity that in 
1798 the Earl of Clare should have held an inquisition 
to rout out the United Irishmen — and typical of Rob- 
ert Emmet that his protest brought his dismissal. 

It was in this period that Moore wrote "Let Erin 
Remember the Days of Old," sung to an old Irish air 

240 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

which made young Emmet cry : "Oh that I were at the 
head of twenty thousand men marching to that air !" 
In 1801 he went to Paris, meeting his brother later 




in Brussels. There was talk of help in August, 1803. 
For three months, at the head of a small but absolutely 
reliable organization, he worked to collect men and 
munitions for a sudden movement to seize Dublin Castle, 
thus to paralyze the Government and to await a general 

241 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

rising. On July 16 in Patrick Street, Dublin, a gun- 
powder explosion, killing one man, was traced to a 
store full of pikes, blunderbusses, powder. This re- 
vealed fresh insurgent activity. The Castle had an 
Ulster spy named Turner at work, and Leonard Mc- 
Nally, "the incorruptible," but neither had been trusted 
by Emmet. The ill luck of the explosion, however, 
forced the insurgents to strike out of hand, July 23. 
In his green general's uniform, Robert Emmet and his 
handful of men sallied from Marshalsea Lane in golden 
evening light, to overpower the Castle. A rabble col- 
lected from the quays and slums, fast on the heels of 
Emmet's uniformed men; old Judge Kilwarden and his 
nephew were dragged from a carriage and murdered; 
the assault became a meaningless scuffle in narrow 
streets ; and Emmet's dream of a brilliant coup was 
quenched in innocent blood. 

He retreated from the brawl to his cottage at Rath- 
famam. He could have escaped. His housekeeper, 
Anne Devlin, was tortured by the soldiers but refused 
to betray him, and he remained hidden. But his love 
for Sarah Curran gave a clue : he was arrested in Sep- 
tember. He offered to plead guilty to keep from im- 
plicating the daughter of the great lawyer, was instead 
trapped by a letter he had sent to her, and had the 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

anguish of seeing their love revealed. John Philpot 
Curran angrily threw up his brief, and Dublin Castle 
rejoiced to have their spy McNally become his attor- 
ney. All through the trial the highest English officials 
studied Emmet's secrets as Emmet entrusted them to 
his counsel. But this charming example of state chiv- 
alry (disclosed in detail in "The Viceroy's Post-Bag'* 
by Michael MacDonagh) was of no personal conse- 
quence. Robert Emmet was guilty. The jury found 
him guilty without retiring. For twelve hours on his 
feet, he then delivered that immortal speech, one hour 
long, which ended, "When my country takes her place 
among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, 
let my epitaph be written." 

The effect of Emmet's oration, delivered in round, 
clear, cadent tones, was so sincere and moving that 
even Norbury, the "hanging judge," is reported to 
have wept. His counsel, McNally, kissed him as he was 
taken away. He was hanged the next afternoon. 

"My friends," he said from the gallows in Thomas 
Street, "I die in peace, with sentiments of universal 
love and kindness toward all men." 

Emmet was twenty-five years old. His execution 
took place September 20, 1803. His comportment 
from the beginning was that of a rapt and disinterested 

24)3 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

spirit, whose love of Ireland burned like a flame. But 
his light did not pierce the grayness after the Union. ; 
The provost of Trinity was more in the spirit of the ■ 
times when, writing to the viceroy the morning after i 
Kilwarden's nephew was murdered, he intimated faith- j 
fully, humbly, and obediently that he had two sons in \ 
orders who'd like to be kept in mind, since "the horrid j 
murders of last night have left a living vacant." Dogs ; 
did not lap blood in the gutters more quickly than did \ 

these gentlemen lick up patronage, | 

] 

6 

At this time Daniel O'Connell was twenty-eight years | 
of age. His was an extremely different spirit from \ 
that of Robert Emmet, and though he detested the \ 
Union, and had said so as a young barrister in his ' 
first public meeting, his whole temperament and train- \ 
ing were opposed to violence. From St. Omer, where I 
he was a schoolboy in France, he learned to hate the i 
French Revolution. : 

He was reared in the bland airs of Kerry, in the \ 
midst of the O'Connell clan. His father and mother ; 
cared enough about devolving property legally to be ! 
married in a Protestant church as well as in a Catholic ' 
chapel, but a strong tribal tradition showed itself in 

^44 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

his being placed with foster-parents in a cottage till he 
was four. He talked Gaelic from infancy. He was 
brought up close to the people, close to their folk- 
ways and legends and passions, and close to their life 
of the soil. His education in France gave him social 
unction — the unction of an abbe — and as he matured 
he became very much the chieftain; lavish, hospitable, 
generous, paternalistic. But what made him most 
different from the "intellectuals" of the United Irish- 
men was his genial knowledge of country-people, his 
flashing human intuition, his ability to read them, to 
lead them — to lead them astray. He was the supreme 
example of the jury-trial lawyer. He was agile in 
mind, even more agile in emotion, enormous in vitality, 
in vivacity, and in perseverance. A big man in height 
and frame, he had a ruddy face which grew heavy in 
age, a small snub nose, singularly lovely blue eyes. 
His voice was golden, of great range, sweetness, and 
carrying power, with deep notes and that ability to 
sustain a flight without apparent eff^ort, as of a mighty 
eagle soaring on level wing. In the incredible repeal 
meetings of 1843, which were attended by crowds as 
great as 250,000 people, O'Connell's voice could 
naturally not be heard to their reverential limits, but 
few human beings have ever exercised such power of 

245 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

oratory. He conjured with the people of three prov- 
inces. He swayed multitudes with the caress of a 
syllable. 

This extraordinary emotional power was soon em- 
ployed by O'Connell in a cause he sincerely loved. It 
was the kind of cause that suited his nature — a con- 
crete, simple, obvious reform within strict legal and 
constitutional limits to which he could devote his stren- 
uous, combative disposition without enduring for a 
moment the acute loneliness of a departure from the 
mob. This was the cause of Catholic emancipation, or 
seats in parliament for Catholics. 

7 

The exclusion of Catholics from the British house of 
commons was the result of double-dealing. When Pitt 
and Castlereagh were touting the Union, they con- 
yeyed to the Catholic archbishops a definite under- 
standing that the Union would mean Catholic eman- 
cipation, the commutation of the tithes, and state pay- 
ment of priests. "When the devil was well, the devil a 
saint was he." With the Union safely delivered, "Pitt 
was under the strongest moral obligation to do the 
utmost in his power to carry the measure," says Lecky. 
*'It is, however, quite plain that Pitt, having obtained 

£46 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

the service he required from the Catholics, had very 
little wish to incur for their sakes any serious difficulty 
he could possibly avoid." 

This "definite betrayal of the Catholic cause" was 
aided by George Ill's insanity. George went oW his 
head when Pitt broached the subject, and Pitt, after 
a noble resignation, came back to office on the old terms. 
He took King George's attitude as final, and pledged 
himself to silenee. This pledge was congenial, and he 
kept it, but it drove the Cath®lic hierarchy from nib- 
bling at loyalty to a position in which, under O'Con- 
nelPs leadership, they defied even the Vatican on the 
subject of the veto, and rejected forever any idea of 
being paid by the state. 

O'Connell was thirty-six when he »ame to the front 
with the Catholic Committee in 1810. The extreme 
subdivision of the land, owing to the demand for com 
as well as meat during the Napoleonic War, created an 
abnormal condition of high rents, high prices, and 
swollen prosperity. It was not till the collapse of 
rents and wages and the beginning of evictions, after 
1815 and peace, that the Catholic agitation became 
keen. Up to 1820, the year he died, Grattan had 
striven for Catholic emancipation (with the veto) in 
the house of commons. His death cleared the way for 

Ml 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

O'Connell. In 1823, working through the Maynooth- 
educated, national-minded priests, he organized the 
Catholic Association, began collecting the peasants' 
pennies as Catholic Rent, and linked with the measure 




of emancipation a promise of justice, legal aid, and 
advocacy to the exploited tenant class. As the fore- 
most Catholic barrister, earning £9000 a year, O'Con- 
nell had colossal legal prestige. He spent himself 
lavishly on his combined work as Liberator and Tri- 

248 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

bune. The Government, through the dry and anti- 
pathetic Peel, had now determined to hold Ireland by 
the quiet means of an imperial constabulary and paid 
magistrates. Its land policy was landlord-made. It 
facilitated cheap ejectments, in case of non-payment 
of rack-rent. The Government had also quietly stimu- 
lated Orangeism and converted the Presbyterian 
Church to great loyalty by giving it an annual grant. 
In 1826 an election in Waterford saw the tenants break 
away from the landlords. In 1828, a parliamentary 
vacancy occurring in Clare, O'Connell decided to bring 
his agitation to a head by the bold method of seeking 
election to a parliament in which it was not legal for 
a Catholic to sit. His opponent, Vesey Fitzgerald, 
was a respected liberal, who had the support of the 
gentry to a man. But O'ConnelPs speeches and pam- 
phlets, the new Catholic press and the aroused priests 
had at last turned abject submissiveness of the feudal 
peasant voter. The tenants defied their landlords and 
elected O'Connell. This more than anything else se- 
cured emancipation in 1829. 

With this movement for emancipation, O^Connell had 
begun the first popular constitutional agitation in Ire- 
land. It was, of course, an easy issue on which to ap- 
peal to Irish pride. It concerned the Catholic gentry, 

249 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

the peasant voters, the priests themselves. Because 
it concerned the priests, O'Connell was able to seize 
the one existing nation-wide, popular machinery for 
creating and binding national opinion, combining it 
with his aid to oppressed tenants, parish by parish. 
And because of O'Connell's personality, his ready wit, 
his brusque and scathing humor, his broad brush- 
strokes and primary colors, he gave Ireland what it had 
not possessed for two hundred years — a national chief- 
tain. His was chieftaincy in a cause that at first was 
utterly simple, racial, and religious. It enabled O'Con- 
nell to forget he had ever joined the free-masons or ad- 
mired Godwin or agreed with Mary Wollstonecraft. 
He drank deep of enthusiasm, applause, unanimity. 
Like many big men with little noses, he was something 
of a physiological conservative, and he became con- 
firmed very early in his great career in his need for a 
tremendous volume of popular support. He was like a 
vast balloon, that sagged and flapped ingloriously until 
pumped from outside. But on some elemental issues 
he was self-supporting. He hated negro slavery, and 
sent back to the Southern States some large sub- 
scriptions from slaveholders. He had stubborn con- 
servative opinions on the subject of trade-unions, and 
a decided belief in the sacred rights of property. These 

250 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

he declared even when inexpedient. And he had a 
rough, satiric genius, which he employed from the start 
to affront and outrage the Ascendancy. 

He and his handful of supporters were eventually 
seated in the house of commons. 

8 

The British house of commons was no place for an 
Irish agitator. It had already developed "that tone 
of gentlemanly moderation, that well-bred pungent 
raillery which is so characteristic of the English par- 
liament, and of successful British ministers." It did 
not suit O'Connell's temper or mission to meet the mood 
of this house. He could not flute politely about ques- 
tions of national subordination, enslavement, or star- 
vation. "The best club in the world" did not squirm at 
dishonesty : they squirmed at the mention of it. O'Con- 
nell called Lord Alvanley "a bloated buffoon" and Peel 
"Orange Peel," and said of one statesman that he was 
"a lineal descendant of the impenitent thief" and of 
another that he was "a fellow whose visage would 
frighten a horse from his oats." The house left its 
answer to hired bulhes. The well-bred raillery of the 
"London Times" was to retort that O'Connell was a 
rancorous, foul-mouthed ruffian. England named him 

S51 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

the Big Beggarman. And, on achieving Catholic eman- 
cipation, he was blackballed by a ladylike English 
Catholic Club. It was, of course, the natural fate of 
an agitator. A wise statesman did not exactly wag 
his tail when he saw O'Connell approaching with a 
string and a can. 

O'Connell's immoderation and exuberance were trifles. 
His serious faults were deeper than those of taste. He 
was a national leader but not a national architect. 
On some questions like the poor law system he thought 
widely. He grasped the horror of Irish famine in ample 
time to give England a policy and a lead. But among 
the trees of politics he did not see the national wood. 
He had no education policy except to reject the queen's 
colleges as "godless'^ colleges. He was quite ready to 
give up his native tongue on utilitarian grounds. He 
advocated state-aided emigration. He doted on Vic- 
toria as "our darling queen." He required and yet 
denounced the use of force. He actually contemplated 
the Irish as West Britons, provided they gained cer- 
tain reforms. As between Grattan's parliament and 
federal home rule he hsid no spiritual compass. He was, 
in these matters, an opportunist. With all sail set and 
a high heart, he caught the breeze of Catholic emanci- 
pation and carried the freight to port. Where he was 

252 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

lost was in the campaign that followed, running before 
the infinitely stronger wind of repeal. In advocating the 
repeal of the Union O'Connell collected those streams 
of feeling with which conquest and confiscation still 
flooded the Irish air. But he had disowned the use of 
force. He was permanently "constitutional.'^ All 
England needed to do to defeat him was to become 
illegal and unconstitutional herself, which she did. 

9 

Before O'Connell entered on the agitation for the 
repeal of the Union, he gave the British parliament a 
fair trial. One hand had taken away the vote from the 
poorest class of Irishmen at the time that the other 
extended Catholic emancipation, but even if the Govern- 
ment conspicuously declined to make O'Connell a K. C, 
to which distinction he was entitled, he and his clan 
soon made an alliance with the Whigs. Ctonnell asso- 
ciated himself with the 1832 Reform Bill, and when Mel- 
bourne returned to power in 1835 an Irish agitator 
was for the first time consulted as to Irish appoint- 
ments in Irish government. 

It was, on the whole, a period of democratic ten- 
dency, with the state ready to give Ireland those means 
of popular uplift of which England thought it stood in 

^53 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

need. The ideas of the time were rational, and it seemed 
sensible to bestow on the Irish a primary school system 
on the English model, prohibiting Irish language, Irish 
literature, Irish history, and all mention of religion. 
Following this scheme — ^which aimed to make the Irish 
rural population read, write, and cipher — there was 
devised a poor-law system and a dispensary-doctor sys- 
tem. The main feature of the poor-law system was 
to be the erection of one hundred vast barracks, each 
capable of holding 1000 paupers, scattered through the 
country. In these great storage-warehouses, called 
*Vorkhouses," the idle poor were to be lodged in per- 
manent idleness, branded as paupers, and grouped in 
pauper uniforms according to sex. Another reform, 
much desired by the rising Catholic mercantile clasSj 
was popular municipal government. Till 1840 no Irish 
Catholic had ever been admitted to the Dublin Corpora- 
tion. So important did the concession seem that 
O'Connell himself became the first lord mayor of Dublin, 
in the interval before the repeal agitation. 

But the poor law, the education scheme, municipal 
reform. Catholic emancipation, did not go deep into 
either of the real issues — the festering issues created 
by conquest and confiscation. To undo confiscation, 
which had dispossessed the Irish clansmen, was the som- 

254 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

ber, sleepless desire of the starving masses of the Irish 
people. This desire was put in words by James Fintan 
Lalor some years later: "The cry of Irish nationality, 
and the cry against the Union, are of little use; they 
have no real hold on the minds of the people ; what the 
peasantry want is the land for themselves; this cry 
must be combined with the others ; the British Govern- 
ment can be only attacked successfully through an at- 
tack on the Irish landed gentry.'* It was, however, not 
as an attack on the gentry but as an attack on the 
established church that the fight was first waged. 

One of the quite barefaced acts of the Anglo-Irish 
parliament had been to exempt pasture-lands from 
tithes. This threw an extra burden on the Catholic 
cottiers. The cost of maintaining the Protestant es- 
tablished church was, in fact, saddled in the South 
"exclusively on the poorest of the Catholic tenantry." 

This was an exaction that aroused a peculiarly 
fierce anger in the otherwise suppressed and impotent 
Catholic peasant. He was the victim of a land system 
which he could not throw off, dependent for his very 
life on landlords — often absentee — ^who gave him no 
vested interest, raised the rent because of improve- 
ments, charged what rent they pleased, and evicted at 
will. In this unsound and inhuman caste system the 

255 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

tenant felt himself bewilderingly entangled, with the 
law against him, the police against him, the military 
against him, the agent against him — every one except 
the priest and the "counselor." But in the case of 
tithes he did not feel so helpless or so bewildered. He 
could grasp the dastardly injustice of his being com- 
pelled to support the church of the Ascendancy, and on 
this issue he was prepared to do battle. 

Peel's Protestant constabulary did what they could 
from 1831 on, to protect the tithe-collectors. In 1832 
there was a massacre in Waterford, and 242 homicides 
within the year. The next years saw hideous epi- 
sodes. A Scottish under-secretary, Thomas Drum- 
mond, then arrived on the scene. He was a sympathetic 
liberal. He made up his mind that the Castle might at 
last dispense with the amiable custom of raising the 
British flag to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne. He 
strove to give the Catholics a part in the administra- 
tion, to admit them to the royal Irish constabulary, 
to cut off the secret stimulus to Orangeism which had 
been supplied by Government policy since the Union, 
to admonish magistrates not to counsel massacre, and 
to remind landlords that "property has its duties as 
well as its rights." 

By 1838 the British Government acted. It passed 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

a. bill making the tithe part of the rent, and reducing 
both the exasperation and the extortion. 

10 

But this left the land system where it was. In 1836 
a royal commission revealed the utter rottenness of 
a depressed, neglected, exploited, non-educated people. 
Out of work and in distress, there were 585,000 men 
with 1,800,000 dependents, making 2,385,000 in all. 
The average weekly wage had sunk to about two shil- 
lings six pence a week. Lord John Russell thought that 
if these 2,385,000 gradually moved into workhouses 
they could live in a "superior degree of comfort." But 
the native Irish did not show any inclination to be 
stored in workhouses, on two meals a day, with men 
segregated in one yard, women in another, the children 
in another. "Confinement of any kind is more irksome 
to an Irishman than it is even to an Englishman," said 
the commissioner, "and hence, although the Irishman 
may be lodged, fed, and clothed in a workhouse better 
than he could lodge, feed, and clothe himself by his own 
exertions, he will yet never enter the workhouse unless 
driven there by actual necessity." 

The population in 1841 was 8,175,000, with fourteen 
workhouses just completed. And the population con- 

257 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

tinued to rise. In this period O'Connell began his 
agitation for the repeal of the Union. While his 
"monster meetings" were in progress, and Father 
Mathew's great temperance campaign, the people 
gathered steadily and mutely for an economic disaster 
which English statesmanship looked upon as deplorably 
"inevitable." For ten years before the great arti- 
ficial famine the house of commons mooned about it. 
They watched Ireland in fascinated apprehension, as 
contractors might watch fresh arrivals climb to an 
unsafe platform, already overloaded. But the O'Con- 
nell formula was constitutionality. "No human revolu- 
tion," he declared, "is worth the effusion of one single 
drop of human blood." He went ahead organizing the 
people for larger and larger assemblies and meetings, 
until more than 500,000 were believed to be assembling 
for a Sunday demonstration at Clontarf in October, 
1843. On the Saturday before it Peel decided to 
meet constitutional agitation and "moral force" with 
unconstitutional prohibition and a few guns. He "pro- 
claimed" the meeting. O'Connell had either to risk an 
Amritsar or to admit that the Government could always 
treat peaceful assembly as criminal. He yielded, and 
his submission ended the constitutional movement for 
repeal. 

258 



The Union and the Repeal Movement 

The economic crash came in 1846. Out of 8,500,000 
nearly 6,000,000 were still living in the kind of hovels 
that Petty had described in their "nasty brutishness" 
in the seventeenth century. Their food was potatoes. 
When the potato crop failed in 1845, and again in 
1846, nothing but the landlords and the Government 
and private charity stood between them and death from 
hunger. The Government behaved with sodden lethargy 
and stupidity. Daniel O'Connell, now over seventy, a 
broken man, dragged himself in 1847 across to the 
house of commons. In a voice so feeble as to be vir- 
tually inaudible he said to them: "Ireland is in your 
hands, in your power. If you do not save her she cannot 
save herself. I solemnly call on you to recollect that 
I predict with the sincerest conviction that a quarter 
of her population will perish unless you come to her 
relief." It was a plutocratic body but not without a 
dramatic sense. O'Connell's voice came almost from 
the grave. They were impressed, moved, reverential, 
sorry for the poor old boy. But their god was 
Property. The Irish, powerless to legislate, counseled 
by the priests and by O'Connell to trust the Govern- 
ment, allowed this food to leave Ireland. 

The old leader was powerless. Already afflicted by 
softening of the brain, he left Ireland in 1847 to travel 

259 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

\ 

to Rome, where he was regarded as perhaps the greatest ; 

living Catholic layman. He was so ill that he halted at : 

i 
Genoa, and died there May, 1847, his mind almost com- i 

pletely crumbled. His last journey has the twilight i 

i 

sadness of the Flight of the Earls. It was more sad, j 

because he had left the Irish nation forever. His ; 

body was returned to be buried in Glasnevin : his heart ' 

was sent to Rome. ] 



260 



CHAPTER X 



THE LAND WAR 



THE O'Connell formula in this period, that "no 
human revolution is worth the effusion of one 
single drop of human blood," had never appealed to 
Young Ireland, the successors to the men of 1798. In 
184j1 this ardent group, comprising Thomas Davis, 
Charles Gavan Duify, and John O'Hagan at first, had 
begun a movement of which "The Nation" was their 
organ. 

They were not mob orators or revivalists. They were 
not agitators. They were not social radicals. They 
saw that Ireland was intellectually infantile, that the 
job of public thinking for Ireland could never be done 
by the stolid, selfish English parliament, and must 
be done by Irishmen, in Ireland. These men loved 
Ireland. The respected and understood the Gaelic 
period, they saw that Ireland's present state was due 
to the wreckage of savage conquest and greedy confis- 

261 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

cation. They knew that the removal of this wreckage 
would only be accomplished by an Ireland with brain 
and muscle, a cool, deliberate, and disciplined Ireland. 
Dan O'Connell they rather despised. He was warm, 
fluent, optimistic, grandiose, uncritical. They were 
tired of him and his theatrical promises, his great 
glistening green foliage and his barrenness of fruit. As 
against O'Connell these men of Young Ireland attuned 
themselves to the new world of republican Europe of 
*48. They went to Lamartine. They knew German 
history and sympathized with the German movement, 
James Clarence Mangan, a poetic genius, influenced 
by the current enthusiasm, translated from the Ger- 
man. The iron will of this group was John Mitchel, son 
of an Ulster Presbyterian clergyman, grandfather of 
the late John Mitchel, Mayor of New York. He wrote 
not with ink but with corrosive. He was mordant, 
grim, eloquent, unbending. He saw the scabbard of 
liberalism that concealed the blade of England's im- 
perialism, and he had contempt for "old Dan." He 
was, above everything, a nationalist. He wrote a 
passionate "Life of Hugh O'Neill." He wrote a "His- 
tory of Ireland." He did not want acts of parliament 
on the terms of Irish subjection. He wanted, like 
Wolfe Tone, to resurrect the Irish nation. 

262 



The Land War 

"The Nation" was the mouthpiece of this desire. In 
a few years this brilliant sixpenny paper had achieved 
a circulation of 10,000 a week. It disliked and 




criticized O^ConnelPs apparent belief that Ireland was 
a mere annex to Irish Catholicism. It did not believe 
in boycotting the queen's colleges. They were neces- 
sary for higher education, a good in itself. It dis- 
liked his pro-royalism and his slobbering loyalty. It 

263 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

had no great sympathy with him when, in spite of his 
loyalty, he was tried for conspiracy by a packed jury 
after the break-up of the repeal meetings. 

With John Mitchel in their counsels, and Thomas 
Francis Meagher and Smith O'Brien, an open split 
had come with O'Connell in 1846 on the theoretic ques- 
tion of the use of "physical force." The death of 
Thomas Davis from scarlet fever in 1845 had already 
removed one of the most elevated and liberating in- 
fluences that was ever exercised in radical Irish poli- 
tics. But even this wise and tolerant nationalist O'Con- 
nell had rebuffed. He sought, like the old paternalist 
he was, to subordinate Young Ireland in the overbear- 
ing, dogmatic manner which had grown on him for 
years. 

Those who seceded from O'Connell on the policy of 
physical force were destined to divide a second time, 
John Mitchel started "The United Irishman" as a 
separatist, revolutionary journal, leaving "The Na- 
tion" to those who thought the advocacy of force less 
expedient. 

Mitchel's outspoken enmity to England led to his 
arrest in March, 1848. O'Brien and Meagher, taken 
at the same time, were released after the jury disagreed. 
Mitchel was convicted of treason-felony. He was sent 

264 



J 



The Land War 

to Tasmania on that voyage of pained separation which 
gave the world his "Jail Journal." The discharge of 
O'Brien and Meagher restored the lesser men to their 
plans for direct action. The famine, however, had been 
another Cromwell, confiscating life rather than land. 
There was no revolutionary pulse in a stricken Ireland. 
In August a few hundred men followed Smith O'Brien 
in an insignificant attack on a small body of police at 
Ballingarry. 

This display of physical force was so futile that 
O'Brien and Meagher were not executed. Ireland was 
helpless. The British Government rested on its laurels. 
The Young Ireland movement went underground. 

The famine, 1846-49, was not a mere accident. It 
was the climax of political and economic degradation. 
Up to that time the modem Irish had protested and 
appealed against misgovernment, but they had not 
really revolted. They had not killed their oppressors 
and seized control of their destinies. Now their quies- 
cence and docility escorted them to death. Daniel 
O'Connell had told the native Irish that they were the 
finest peasantry on earth. A Catholic bishop had 
rolled his eyes to heaven because the good creatures 

265 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

had ^'bravely paid their rent." John O'Connell, the 
Protector's son, had said: "I thank God I live among 
a people who would rather die of hunger than defraud 
the landlords of their rent!" (Why, asked Michael 
Davitt, was he not kicked into "the sink of the Lif- 
fey?") The Young Irelanders had toyed brightly 
with the name of revolution, but there was no revolu- 
tion in Ireland. It had the glazed eye of starvation, 
the cough of death. 

A cry was wrung from Lord John Russell : "We have 
made Ireland — I speak it deliberately — ^we have made 
it the most degraded and the most miserable country 
in the world . . . All the world is crying shame upon 
us ; but we are equally callous to our ignominy, aiid to 
the results of our misgovernment." 

This English politician out of office, and desiring 
office, did not distract the Irish nation from its hideous 
catastrophe. Ireland sat in the center of its 729,000 
dead, musing on the counsel of landlords and statesmen 
and bishops. A nation that had abounded in life lost 
its buoyancy. A nation's laughter died within. 

When the people knew in 1846 that the potato crop 
was again a failure, they saw their doom. A kind of 
stupor, A. M. Sullivan said, "fell upon the people, con- 



The JLand War 

trasting remarkably with the fierce energy put forth a 
year before. It was no uncommon sight to see the 
cottier and his little family seated on the garden fence 
gazing all day long in moody silence at the blighted 
plot that had been their last hope. Nothing could rouse 
them. You spoke; they answered not. You tried to 
cheer them; they shook their heads. I never saw so 
sudden and so terrible a transformation." 

The British parliament could not, and did not, feel 
its responsibility. It was a parliament of landlords 
and bankers, comfortable men. It said : This famine is 
creating a multitude of beggars; we must firmly dis- 
courage beggars. It did everything it could to regulate 
and discipline the people who came in suppliant thou- 
sands for relief. The Government required that men in 
the tremor of death should labor to build useless roads, 
useless piers, useless mounds, because to give something 
for nothing was to pauperize, and to build useful pub- 
lic works might interfere with "competition." Govern- 
ment did not supervise the "cofSn ships" which bore 
away the famine refugees because that, also, might in- 
terfere with competition. One vessel taking 200 steer- 
age passengers from Sligo to Liverpool packed its vic- 
tims so close in the hold that seventy-two were trampled 

267 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

or suffocated to death before the short voyage was 
over. That was one incident of hundreds of incidents 
in the episode of 1846-4<9. 

The landed gentry in some cases slaved to help the 
people. So did many volunteers. So did many chari- 
table English persons. But in 184<6 alone 50,000 fami- 
lies — quarter of a million people — ^were evicted for not 
paying their rents. Their huts were leveled to the earth 
and they were left to die. During those hunger years 
there was bountiful food in sight of the famine victims. 
During 1846-49 the English imported from Ireland 
572,485 head of cattle; 839,118 sheep; 699,021 pigs; 
2,532,839 quarters of oats ; 1,821,091 hundredweights 
of oatmeal; 455,256 quarters of wheat; 1,494,852 
hundredweights of wheatmeal. The Irish peasants ate 
grass. The^^ ate seaweed. They ate the rotting pota- 
toes. In the midst of plenty, at the door of the wealth- 
iest nation in the world, 729,033 victims died — more 
than the British Empire lost in the four years of the 
World War. Each death was a preventable death. 
Each death was due to causes over which mankind has 
control. 

3 

The failure of England to prevent or avert the fam- 
ine was the beginning of acute public thinking in 

268 



Tlie Land War 

modern Ireland. Of the million Irish who were 
wrenched from their country in that period a great 
number were filled with hatred of the British Govern- 
ment and the Anglo-Irish landlord ; a perceptible num- 
ber were also filled with contempt for Irishmen them- 
selves. The craven spirit of the people, their ignorance, 
their apathy, their despair, generated a fierce and per- 
manent anger in the manlier Irishmen. Thousands 
upon thousands had needlessly perished from starva- 
tion in a period when nearly £50,000,000 worth of 
available foodstuff had left the rich fields of Ireland. 
This fact nerved intelligent men to the land war that 
was to follow. 

As to England, the famine seemed an act of God, 
or else the purging of overburdened nature. Only at 
nightmare moments, seldom permitted, did it appear 
credible that England had originated, enforced, and 
protected a fatal land system. The more insolent Eng- 
lishman was ready, like the "London Times,'' to speak 
of the tragedy in terms of racial hatred and contempt : 
"The Celt goes to yield to the Saxon. This island of 
one hundred and sixty harbors, with its fertile soil, 
with noble rivers and beautiful lakes, with fertile mines 
and riches of every kind, is being cleared quietly for 
the interests and luxury of humanity." This vicious 

269 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

tone was not, however, the tone of the more educated 
Englishman. 

He saw the famine, however, in terms of class. He 
felt quite clear that Ireland, like England itseli, was 
mainly inhabited by "the lower orders of mankind." 
He felt that the "democracy," as it was called, was the 
tedious problem of the upper class, and that both 
in England and in Ireland it was primarily important 
that this dangerous democracy be kept in its place. 
The extension of the suffrage, the development of edu- 
cation, the multiplication of public utilities and serv- 
ices — these were, on the whole, very debatable and 
risky reforms. What one desired, in England as well 
as in Ireland, was the right moral outlook on the part 
of the people. One sought a loyal and devoted yeo- 
manry, a God-fearing and obedient and dutiful people, 
a people that went in for no nonsense like trade-unions 
or combination, that respected its superiors, reverenced 
its church, loved its gracious sovereign, and knew its 
place. In this mood the feudal upper class inspected 
the lower class. The tragedy of Ireland was that the 
Irish people failed to be (1) dutiful, and (2) a sturdy 
English yeomanry. 

But this aristocratic landlord attitude was not 
universal. The governing class was almost strong 

270 



The Land War 

enough, a few years later, to swing England for the 
Southern States in the American Civil War. The 
aristocracy and its parasites, full of class prejudice, 
frankly saw Lincoln as a baboon or gorilla. Even 
Gladstone, on the eve of liberalism, favored the South. 
But with the growing industrialism of England a new 
public opinion had also begun to grow : the middle class 
did not share essentially feudal sympathies. John 
Bright was to stand like a rock for the North. And 
the middle class joined him. It was prosperous, sober, 
practical, peace-loving, tending toward the humane 
and philanthropic, and attracting toward itself some of 
the gentlemanly, chivalrous representatives of the older 
order. 

It was Protestant in its religion, and prone to 
link the greatness of England with the greatness of 
Protestantism. It was, in general, good-natured and 
complacent. It regarded the Continent of Europe as 
a queer and wicked place. It already said "Paris" 
with a wink, and "Rome" with a shudder. The ap- 
prehensions of the Middle Ages were, in a sense, being 
recapitulated by the emerging Saxon. But in John 
Stuart Mill and the lesser utilitarians there was a 
resolute attempt to rise above prejudice, and to see 
life in a clear, even if a chilly, light. 

271 



The Story of the Irish Nation 



By this rising liberalism of England, Ireland scarcely 
ever was considered in its national aspect. It was 
now a fixed fact in the liberal English mind that Ireland 
was physically and historically part of the United 
Kingdom, indissolubly wedded. It was also a fixed 
fact that the native Irish were distressful and trouble- 
some. But, granting the difficulty of the Irish tempera- 
ment, the English liberal felt that something ought to 
be conceded to the Irish in time. How much? This 
conundrum was strictly concerned with the "conces- 
sion" of self-government. That Ireland should want 
separation from England was already unthinkable. 
Neither liberal nor conservative politician mentioned 
separation except as a diabolical and half-savage idea, 
generated only in the brains of treason-criminals. As 
the empire grew wealthier and acquired more territory, 
this notion of the wickedness of separatism steadily in- 
tensified. 

Separatism, indeed, was in no man's mind im- 
mediately after the famine. The prudent Irish pro- 
gram, as represented by Cardinal Cullen, was to at- 
tempt, without O'Connell's personality, to continue the 
O'Connell compromise in the house of commons. In 



The Land War 

complete disagreement with this program were Gavan 
DufFy, the Young Irelander; George Henr^^ Moore, a 
landlord whose son became famous as George Moore the 
novelist; and Sharman Crawford and Frederic Lucas. 
These men knew that Ireland could gain nothing by 
sending to London a handful of Whig parliamen- 
tarians. Such loose representatives could too easily be 
bought off with a judgeship or a job at the Castle. 
The radicals realized that in this emergency Ireland 
needed a parliamentary party consciously independent 
of all opposition, and behind it a tenants' organization 
in Ireland. 

The tenants' organization was especially needed be- 
cause, after the famine, an Encumbered Estates Act 
had been passed to enable landlords to sell out. By this 
process, it was hoped, a number of unencumbered Scot- 
tish and English proprietors could start anew. They 
did start anew with three years of "clearance." Nearly 
200,000 families were uprooted, compelled to go to the 
workhouse or to leave Ireland. These inhimian clear- 
ances, even more than the artificial famine, filled the 
Irish peasants with indignation. But their secret so- 
ciety of Ribbonmen was banned by the church, and 
within a few years Duffy's league was captured by the 
conservatives, who became known in parliament as the 

27S 



The Story of the Irish Nation i 

Pope's Brass Band. "Three-fourths of the representa- ■ 
tives elected by the people," said Duffy, "assented in 
silence [to this extermination policy] and three-fourths 
of the bishops, born and bred among them, sanctioned 
the perfidy." ! 

Cardinal CuUen was not fortunate in his parlia- J 
mentary party. Sadleir and Keogh, the leaders of it, j 
could not stand temptation. Of their group, "one was I 
a forger, and committed suicide ; the other was a forger, I 
and was expelled from parliament; the third was a i 
swindler, and fled; and the fourth was made a judge." \ 

Gavan Duffy sailed for Australia in 1855. "There : 
is no more hope for Ireland," he said of his period, '\ 
"than for a corpse on the dissecting-table." \ 



Ireland, in reality, was not like a corpse. It was 
like the dumb victim of a shattering accident. But 
after that accident its weakness was not so great as it 
seemed. Though the total number of living Irish had 
been reduced to possibly eight million, the Irish were 
now implanted in Canada, Australia, England, and 
above all the United States. They did not lose their 
desire to help Ireland. The agony of emigration was 
in many cases only sentimental. It transferred to the 

274 



The Land War 

broad shoulders of the United States the burden of 
illiteracy and technical backwardness which had been 
created by bad English government. By the shifting 
of this burden the Irish were the gainers. In a few 
years the children of 1848 were grown, and they were 
men with more material resources, a better smattering 
of education, and a livelier will than any group of 
native Irishmen had possessed for many years. Their 
will, indeed, often outran their sagacity, yet it was only 
by the combination of Irish and American Irish that the 
liberation of the Irish tenant was at last to be secured. 
The Irish and Anglo-Irish landlords resisted land agi- 
tation even more than the British Government. The 
whetstone of the land movement was supplied by the 
Fenians. This society sprang from, a small group 
called together in New York as the Emmet Monument 
Association, in 1854. The men most prominent in this 
group were '48 insurgents — John O'Mahony, Michael 
Doheny, and others. And they joined, through James 
Stephens, with the I. R. B., or Irish Republican 
Brotherhood, which was founded in Dublin in 1858. 

James Stephens, bom in Kilkenny in 1828, had es- 
caped to France after the fiasco of '48. There he at 
first supported himself by the grim labor of translating 
Dickens into French. The great lesson which the 

275 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

failure of Young Ireland had impressed on this ener- 
getic, handsome, arrogant man was the weakness of in- 
tellectual middle-class propaganda. He made up his 
mind, according to Michael Davitt, that he would rely 
solely on the "common people" in building up the 
I. R. B. He spent 1858 and 1859 scouring Ireland to 
recruit the young men for this secret society, to which 
America was to supply arms. The work attracted the 
more adventurous and the wilder temperaments. 
O^Donovan Rossa of Skibbereen was one of his aides. 
John O'Leary and Thomas Clarke Luby were two of 
his intellectuals. A sensational impetus, fostered by 
Stephens, was given in the funeral of a '48 man, Ter- 
ence Bellew McManus, conducted from San Francisco 
to Dublin as a national memorial. In the United 
States, Stephens placed the Fenian Brotherhood "in 
proper auxiliary relation with the home organization." 
During the early stages of the Civil War he was busy 
among the Irish-American regiments working at the 
front and having "free access both to the Federal and 
Confederate forces." He returned to Ireland, and, as 
Michael Davitt caustically remarks, "founded a news- 
paper to be a mouthpiece for a secret organization." 

It was Stephens's belief that he could promise a ris- 
ing. He had his connections all over the United States, 

276 



The Land War 

in South America, in Paris, London, Glasgow, Liver- 
pool, Manchester. He had a great number of Fenians 
in the British army. "The Irish People," run by 
O'Leary and Luby, was filled with "wicked diatribes" 
such as : "I am free to admit that Thuggism has never 
produced the death by starvation of two millions of 
people, and is therefore, compared to Irish aristocracy, 
a harmless institution." But "The Irish People" gave 
Dublin Castle the excuse it needed. By swooping down 
on it in good time the Government upset the Fenian 
game. It filled Ireland with troops. It arrested 
Stephens. Through Fenian aid Stephens made a dra- 
matic escape and promised a rising in 1866, but the 
English, unusually alert, squelched every move or even 
sign of insurgent activity. So far as Ireland was con- 
cerned, the Government was crowned with success. And 
yet Fenianism made a startling impression elsewhere. 

6 

This was in England. In September, 1867, a prison- 
van containing two leading Fenians was ambushed on 
its way through Manchester, and the prisoners enabled 
to escape. A police sergeant, refusing to give up the 
keys, was killed by the single shot that was fired to 
blow open the lock. Five youths in the party were 

277 



....,./..._i 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

seized. Three of them — ^Allen, Larkln, and O'Brien- 
were found guilty of murder. They met their sentence 
with the cry, "God save Ireland!" There was much 
public protest before they were hanged. "The trial," 
said T. P. O'Connor, "took place amid a hurricane of 
public passion and panic." Its effect was greatly deep- 
ened by an attempt in December to free Ricard O'Sul- 
livan Burke from Clerkenwell Prison, in London. The 
idea in this criminally reckless exploit was to blow a 
hole in the prison-wall with a barrel of gunpowder. 
The barrel was misplaced, however, and twelve poor 
people were killed and more than one hundred injured. 
The Irish famine made far less impression on the bulk 
of middle-class England than the Clerkenwell explosions 
and the executions of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien. 
These two affairs, both occurring in 1867, stirred a new 
England. It was, in part, the England of no-popery, 
race hatred, and race contempt. But it was also an 
England politically virginal. With its great industrial 
connections in Scotland and Wales, it was, on the whole, 
quite different from the old-fashioned country which 
had always supported the lord, the bishop, and the 
squire. Fed by the same newspapers and looking ta 
the same parliament, it still beheld in Fenianism a 
problem which it could not quite understand. It felt 



The Land War 

astonishment at the outrages, and indignation and fear* 
It also felt curiosity. Politically-minded men woke 
up to this change. They discovered that one barrel 
of gunpowder exploded inside the city of London does 
infallibly promote thinking. John Bright shook Eng~ 
land. He declared that he did not consider the execu- 
tion of the "Manchester Martyrs" just. Not so long 
afterward he said of Ireland in general: "Force is no 
remedy." And Gladstone not so long afterward made 
the tremendous admission that there was more in Feni- 
anism than Irish wickedness. 

This carefully guarded utterance came in 1869» 
In 1868 Lord Stanley, standing closer to the Fenian 
outbursts, had confessed "the painful, the dangerous, 
the discreditable state of things that unhappily con- 
tinues to exist in Ireland." English public opinion, 
it is clear, was at last bestirring itself, after centuries 
of that stone-age policy which is more politely termed 

imperiaHsm. 

7 

What did Gladstone see when he himself rubbed his 
eyes and woke up, in 1868? 

The policy of England-in-Ireland since 1801 had 
been suppressive, except in Melbourne's time. Peel, a 
capable, stiff administrator, had substituted paid 

279 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

magistrates and an imperial constabulary for unre- 
liable and irregular military forces. By this means 
Dublin Castle had been given eyes and ears everywhere. 
A complete espionage system enabled the Government 
to control explosive nationalism: the insurrections of 
1848 and 1867 had 'been instantly curbed. But the 
skill of the Government in paralyzing national feeling 
could only be compared to the skill of a guard who 
keeps a prisoner in manacles. The triumph of the 
Government was simply to illustrate the unsuccessful 
paroxysms of Ireland attempting to escape. And the 
insurrections of 1803, 1848, 1867, had to be accom- 
panied by stories of tithe war, Ribbonmen, Orange 
disturbances, famines, and vast clearances. The legend 
of the so-called union was one which mocked every pre- 
tense of consent: 

1800-01. Insurrection Act, Suspension of Habeas Corpus, Martial 
Law. 

1803. Insurrection Act. 

1804. Habeas Corpus Suspended. 

1807-10. Insurrection Act, Martial Law, and Habeas Corpus Sus- 
pended. 

1814. Habeas Corpus Suspended. 

1814-18. Insurrection Act. 

1822-24. HM)eas Corpus Suspended, Insurrection Act. 

1825-28. Act Suppressing Catholic Association. 

1830. Arms Act. 

1831-32. Stanley's Arms Act. 

1832. Arms and Gunpowder Act. 

1833. Suppression of Disturbance. 

1834. Disturbance Amended. 
1834. Arms and Gunpowder Act. 

^80 



The Land War 

1835. Public Peace Act. 

1836. Arms Act. 

1838. Arms Act. 

1839. Unlawful Oaths Act. 

1840. Arms Act. 

1841. Outrages Act. 
1841. Arms Act. 
1843. Arms Act. 

1843. Act Consolidating Coercion Acts. 

1844. Unlawful Oaths Act. 

1845. Constabulary Enlargement. 

1845. Unlawful Oaths Act. 

1846. Constabulary Enlargement. 

1847. Crime and Outrage. 

1848-49. Habeas Corpus Suspension, Crime and Outrage, Re- 
moval of Arms, Treason amendment. 

1850-55. Crime and Outrage. 

1856-64. Peace Preservation Act. • 

1866-68. Habeas Corpus Suspension. 



These triumphs of government under the Union, 
listed by Michael Davitt and Barry O'Brien, show the 
continuance of coercion. And the Coercion Acts were 
by no means improperly named. "Many of them abol- 
ished trial by jury, some of them established martial 
law ; transportation, flogging, death, were the ordinary 
sentences." (T. P. O'Connor.) Daniel O'Connell 
said: "I have known instances where men have been 
nearly flogged to death." The whole ludicrous and 
hideous panorama simply illustrated Dean Swift's text 
of 1720: "In reason all government without the con- 
sent of the governed is the very definition of slavery: 
but in fact eleven men well armed will certainly subdue 
one single man in his shirt. '^ 

281 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

The counterpart of this picture of suppression is 

Davitt's list of remedial land legislation. Of the 

twenty-three bills introduced from 1829 to 1858, none 

was passed. 

8 

What did this mean? It meant, when Gladstone 
looked at it with the reverberation of Clerkenwell in 
his ears, that British government in Ireland had never 
become civilized, that the Irish resented and hated it, 
that the Union was a failure. It meant, moreover^ 
that John Bright's words in 1849 were true: "When 
law refuses its duty ; when government denies the right 
of the people; when ccmpetition is so fierce for the 
little land which the monopolists grant to cultivation 
in Ireland; when, in fact, millions are scrambling for 
the potato — these people are driven back from law, and 
from the usages of civilization, to that which is termed 
the law of nature, and if not the strongest, the laws 
of the vindictive ; and in this case the people of Ireland 
believe, to my certain knowledge, that it is only by 
these acts of vengeance, periodically committed, that 
they can hold in suspense the arm of the proprietor, of 
the landlord, and the agent, who, in too many cases, 
would, if he dared, exterminate them. Don't let us 
disguise it from ourselves ; there is a war between land- 

28S 



The Land War 

lord and tenant — a war as fierce and relentless as 
though it were carried on by force of arms." 

Were the native Irish perverse to make it war? 
Never, until Gladstone came to power, was any toler- 




able alternative offered to these Irish. They were in- 
vited, indeed, to think of themselves as English. They 
were given an English established church, English 
school-books in the "national" schools, an English 
queen and English loyalty. But the fact that they 

283 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

were not West Britons resulted in an impasse between 
the administration, the legislature, the landlord gar- 
rison, and themselves. The native Irish had no option 
except to resist or to fight, until W. E. Gladstone rose 
up in the house of commons. 

The fact that an English statesman of Gladstone's 
caliber had at last, after centuries of evasion, spoken 
about this shabby, unpopular cause, was a turning- 
point in Irish history. 

Gladstone was not pro-national. He had no idea of 
giving Ireland national independence. He knew vir- 
tually nothing of the Gaelic past. He never set his 
foot in Ireland until he was sixty-eight years old, and 
then his visit "lasted little more than three weeks, and 
did not extend beyond a very decidedly English pale.'* 
Though, forty years old at the time of the famine, that 
event had made no real impression on him, and in 1853 
he himself blithely began the overtaxation of Ireland. 
This "fiscal iniquity," which was exposed by a Liberal 
commission in 1896, was part of his "carnal satisfac- 
tion at abundant revenue." But with these limitations 
and qualifications, the great fact remains about Glad- 
stone that he had turned on Ireland his capacious, 
ominous, cavernous political gaze. 

What he saw was not a sick nationality, for all his 

284 



The Land War 

Italian sympathies. What he chose to see, in the first 
instance, was merely a large Catholic community with 
a Protestant church established over it, a large Catho- 
lic community without a university, and a large Catho- 
lic community with a bad land system. What he un- 
dertook to tackle first was the established church. It 
fell at the first grapple. 

9 

The established church had easily survived the tithe 
war, in which police. Lancers, Highlanders, and artil- 
lery had on occasion been necessary to seize a single 
cow that no one would afterward buy. But the estab- 
lishment could not withstand any rational assault from 
an English statesman with backing. In 1861 there 
were 5,800,000 people in Ireland. Of these only 
690,000 were Protestants. It was the Catholics, in 
bhe main, who were forced to support the church. One 
of the great, and of course conscientious, purposes of 
the establishment had been to convert the papists. 
To this their own pennies were applied. But even in 
the famine time, when "bread and Protestantism were 
offered to the starving in the same hand," as Locker- 
Lampson puts it, the converts were not worth count- 
ing, or having. The prosperity of the established 

285 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

church had not, however, been seriously affected. For j 

1400 benefices it had, during the tithe war, an income '■ 

of £600,000 a year. For twenty-two overpaid bishops \ 

its income amounted to the vast sum of £150,000 a ! 

year. This abnormahty could not survive serious I 

political inspection. The Orangemen, whose clergy- 1 

j 
men had received an annual grant, objected to dis- ; 

establishment. The Rev. Mr. Flanagan declared, "If ; 

they ever dare to lay unholy hands upon the church, 

^00,000 Orangemen will tell them it shall never be." ; 

The disestablishment went through quite without trou- I 

ble. The property of the church, mainly confiscated ; 

land, was worth fourteen million pounds. The vested ] 

interests of the church were all respected, and capital 

was left over for land-purchase, rent-arrears, and vari- | 

ous other humane provisions: £1,000,000 was eventu- i 

ally devoted to intermediate or secondary education. i 

10 \ 

Once Gladstone began to bring Ireland into liberal ■ 
focus he had his work cut out for him. He was told : 
that he was destroying the constitution. He reminded ' 
his hearers that eight times within his own recollection i 
the constitution had been wholly ruined and destroyed, j 
He realized, in truth, that if the constitution was to be 

286 i 



The Land War 

saved, it could only be saved by tackling this question 
of Ireland. Fifteen years before he even murmured 
home rule Gladstone honestly faced the English aspect 
of Ireland: "The state of Ireland after seven hundred 
years of our tutelage is in my opinion so long as it 
continues an intolerable disgrace, and a danger so abso- 
lutely transcending all others, that I call it the only 
real danger of the noble empire of the queen." So, in 
1870, he told Lord Granville. 

His conviction was, in great degree, the result of 
Fenianism. But England itself had to have a much 
larger dose of Fenianism before it would wake up. 
Gladstone's first Land Bill was almost as hopeless a 
straddle as his Irish University Bill. This, however, 
was certain: He no longer disguised to himself the 
cardinal fact that the state of Ireland was the "ulti- 
mate result of our misgovernment.'' 

The state of Ireland, in reality, was economically 
and socially rotten. Those who saw land simply as 
property and who looked on English government 
mainly as a device to protect English property in Ire- 
land could never understand the unhealthy condition 
of Ireland. They asked: Why can't the Irish look on 
land tenure as a simple case of contract, the tenant 
taking his lease and the landlord taking his rent ? The 

287 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

] 
unreasonableness of the Irish appeared clear to thou- \ 

sands of well-meaning Englishmen. Gladstone had to j 

take his pointer in hand. He had to explain to his ; 

own cabinet, bit by bit, that Ireland had never come ; 

to accept the landlord, especially the absentee land- ; 

lord, as the owner of the land. It was the tenants, the • 

cultivators, who had themselves reclaimed the swamp, ; 

dug the drain, hauled the manure, built the wall, raised : 

the house. The land to them was their sole means of \ 

vital production, and they, the rude peasants, had \ 

given the land its "working value." They looked on the J 

landlord in most cases as an alien usurper. In the best i 

case they saw in him only a part-proprietor, a man ' 

entitled to receive rent but not entitled to anything \ 

more. The transfer of the land from one tenant to 1 

another was, in the cultivators' view, a transfer involv- ; 

ing the improvements. And the tenants set their ' 

hearts on three things : fair rent, fixity of tenure, and : 

free sale. Only with these guarantees could they be | 

secure against eviction, famine, enslavement. And no \ 

matter how many imperial laws and how many imperial ■ 

police and troops, how many Arms Acts and Coercion 

Acts, were to girdle the landlord, the war for their 

Magna Charta must go irresistibly on. In this war, \ 

as the Irish peasants saw it, they fought with a worse ; 

288 



The Land War 

enemy in the rear than in front. If the alien parlia- 
ment, the alien constabulary, the alien judge, threat- 
ened the advance of the tenant, he knew that behind 
him was the bottomless pit of famine. He was not, in 
any case, becoming a millionaire out of his occupation. 
It was all he could do to support himself on potatoes, 
skim milk, perhaps American bacon and American 
flour, in the simplest, the ugliest, the meanest, of 
houses. The feudal aristocrats against whom he went 
into combat, and the new mercantile proprietors, had a 
somewhat higher standard of living. The dispropor- 
tion of his sacrifices, against the lurid background of 
his history, made the Irish tenant unconquerable once 
he became organized. 

11 

While he was still fighting instinctively against the 
machines of the law which the landlord set in motion, 
a curious development was taking place in the political 
field. Since the beginning of the •eighteenth century 
the Protestant Anglo-Irishman had been slowly and 
surely driven into protest against English misgovem- 
ment. Swift, Grattan, and Flood were not Irishmen; 
they were the sons of English clerks and officials in Ire- 
land. But in precisely the same way that the colonists 

289 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

in America had rebelled against arrogant privilege, j 

these Anglo-Irish rebelled against it in Ireland. The \ 
spirit of 1782 was the spirit of Washington and Frank- 
lin, except that the Anglo-Irish colonists held on to the 

"connection" because of the inimical native Irish. j 

Ever since that revolt of the Anglo-Irish, two con- j 

trary processes had been working: (1) the process of \ 

weaving the native Irish into the "connection" with j 

Britain; (S) the process of weaving the Anglo-Irish j 

into the policy of separation. The emphasis in the ■ 

first case was on the British constitution and the need j 

of a new constitution granting autonomy or self-gov- \ 

ernment. In the second case the emphasis was on ; 

Irish nationality. The behavior of England had never i 

driven Grattan completely into the Irish nationality. : 

Excellent administrators like Thomas Drummond un- ; 

derstood nationality but advocated home rule, and j 

O^Connell himself had no real desire except for self- ] 

I 

government. j 

The Irish Catholics, it is true, had no monopoly of \ 
national or separatist spirit. Before 1798 the Ulster | 
Presbyterians — Henry Joy McCracken, Russell, Orr — ; 
were republicans first of all, but Wolfe Tone, Robert \ 
Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, were Protestant : 
Irish nationalists. So, in 1848, the cause of nation- \ 

S90 \ 



The Land War 

ality was uncompromisingly urged by the son of an 
Ulster Presbyterian clergyman, John Mitchel; by 
the son of a Welsh Protestant, Thomas Davis; 
by men of non-Gaelic name like Kickham and 
Stephens. The fact remained, however, that the desire 
for home rule flourished in many Anglo-Irishmen who 
had no separatist feeling. And now, under the leader- 
ship of an Ulster Protestant, the son of a clergyman, 
another drive was to be made in the direction of self- 
government. 

This extremely amiable and gifted Ulsterman, Isaac 
Butt, had once debated in favor of the Union against 
O'Connell. But when Gladstone had disestablished the 
church, in contempt of the Union, Butt and a group 
of irate Protestant conservatives met in Dublin in 
1870 and propounded the theory that "the true remedy 
for the evils of Ireland is the establishment of an Irish 
parliament with full control over our domestic affairs.'* 

A Trinity College professor suggested the name 
Home Rule for this venture, and so Home Rule was 
launched. Its immediate popularity in Ireland meant 
nothing, however, to hberal England. "Can any sen- 
sible man, can any rational man," asked Gladstone in 
withering tones next year, "suppose that at this time 
of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to 

291 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

disintegrate the great capital institutions of the coun- j 

. . . i 

try for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous m | 

the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we ! 

possess for bestowing benefits, through legislation, on ; 

the country to which we belong?" 

The rottenness of electioneering in Ireland, under a | 

franchise which polled about 90,000 voters out of | 

5,500,000 people, made any attempt at a constitutional j 

movement absurd. But, in spite of an illiteracy in Ire- \ 

land that in 1895 still affected 40,000 voters out of a i 

total of 220,000, the Ballot Act of 1870 enabled the i 

i 

Irish tenant at last to vote "without the fear of evic- ] 

tion, with the attendant risks of hunger, exile or 

death/' (T. P. O'Connor.) In thus vindicating his ; 

belief in "public liberty," Gladstone paved the way ■ 

for the colossal popular agitation which engrossed the , 

rest of his life. | 

Isaac Butt did not arouse Ireland on Home Rule. ! 

He was a man of penetrating mind and high integrity, \ 

but he was one of those advocates of self-government j 

who never learn to govern the self. He was a large, ] 

lax, limpid man, extremely good-natured and easy- \ 

going. He was everybody's friend, incapable of mak- | 

ing a budget either of his time or his money, and not ; 

even able to keep two steps in front of the debtor's jail. , 

ooo j 



The Land War 

In the election of 1874 he enlisted A. M. Sullivan, 
Joseph Biggar, Richard Power, and some other nation- 
alists, but he also enlisted a number of genteel, con- 
servative squires who went to the imperial parliament 
mainly for its social distinction. 

12 

It was in this party, and under the lymphatic lead- 
ership of Isaac Butt, that Pamell entered the house of 
commons. 

Like Robert Emmet, Charles Stewart Parnell was 
the descendant of a Cromwellian. Parnell the poet and 
the incorruptible Irish chancellor. Sir John Parnell, 
were his two most distinguished antecedents. His 
father, John Henry Parnell, was of the landed gentry 
in Wicklow, a quiet and undistinguished man. Par- 
nell's mother, however, was a decided and spirited per- 
sonality, the daughter of Commodore Charles Stewart, 
"Old Ironsides," of the American navy. Pamell's 
father met her on a tour in America in 1834, and 
brought her back to Ireland. She bore him eleven 
children, her son Charles Stewart Parnell being bom 
in 1846. 

When Pamell entered the house of commons he was 
not yet thirty. He was in no sense a traditional Irish- 

293 



The Story of the Irish Nation 



man. He was tall, of slim American build, unassuming 
and reticent in manner, and stately in bearing. He 
had gone to Cambridge University, and he had the 




Charles Stewart Parnell 



accent and the style of the Anglo-Irish gentleman. 
No eye discerned in him a popular leader, or anything 
but a young squire turned Home Ruler. 

Pamell's public career was short. He died at forty- 
five years of age, in 1891. But curtailed as it was, 

^94 



The Land War 

and little effort as he made to court personal favor, 
he did more to change the fortunes of the entire Irish 
nation than any of its previous popular leaders. 

He found the native Irish in the grip of the feudal 
system. He knew that the brain which controlled the 
feudal hand was in England, in the British cabinet. 
By the policy which he developed, and the inflexible 
will with which he applied his policy, Parnell operated 
on British politics as no Irishman had operated before 
him. He saw Britain and British methods with the 
eye of a military engineer. As a cold realist he forged 
the weapon he needed out of the Irish parliamentary 
party. His use of that weapon was military. He 
changed the house of commons from a pompous court- 
room in which Ireland was periodically pronounced 
guilty into a battle-field on which Ireland put Britain 
on the defensive. By his program of attack he con- 
vinced Englishmen, as nothing else had done since 
Elizabeth, that Ireland was an "inveterate wound in 
the flank" of their country. He made that wound bite 
and rankle. He educated Britain in its pretension, its 
sluggish complacency, its insolence, its condescension. 
His attack was contemptuous and unfriendly. By re- 
peated moral abrasion, he forced Tory and Liberal into 
realizing the moral fraud of the British position in 

295 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Ireland. Before he was thirty-five the heads of both 
parties had to consider doing business with him. Both 
Tories and Liberals sought an alliance. When, in the 
end, Gladstone made Home Rule his own, Parnell mod- 
erated his parliamentary tone. But out of his 
strategy, before he died, the land war was brought to 
a reasonable armistice and the Union was upset forever. 

13 

In politics, as in other forms of warfare, the general 
alone cannot win. Parnell profited by the situation in 
England, in America, in Ireland. Gladstone he called 
the "grand old spider" and he knew how slippery and 
sinuous, how plausible and casuistic, was that eminent 
exponent of Liberalism. Yet, with the full knowledge 
that Gladstone had a mind with as many entrances 
and exits as a summer hotel, that he never uttered a 
moral sentiment without taking up a political collec- 
tion, the fact remained for Ireland that Gladstone had 
moved from the Tory valuation of life to the half- 
mystical, half-deceived. Liberal valuation, in which a 
policy of "trust" enabled him to propose to English- 
men a program of power. To keep such a program 
before the British public, with its Tory German queen, 
its bilious civil service, its choleric colonels, its slow 

£96 



The Land War 

omnivorous banking class, its thumpingly dull squires, 
its anemic clerks, its impenalistic Union Jackals, was 
in itself a work of moral genius. And while Gladstone 
had to be watched, because there was a lie in the com- 
promise of Liberalism, the mere fact that he was an 
Englishman inculcating morals in politics was an ad- 
vantage to Parnell. 

The advantage that America provided was quite dif- 
ferent. The Irish in the United States did not want 
to overwhelm the house of commons with argument. 
Most of them wanted to blow it up with dynamite, 
Irish members and all. They had themselves been 
wronged and injured. They desired to injure, if not 
to wrong, in return. A great many Englishmen were 
slain by word of mouth in New York and Boston and 
Chicago saloons in the decade which preceded Parnell's 
leadership. But young Irishmen like John Devoy were 
contemptuous of this brainless talk of vengeance, this 
"rat-hole conspiracy." Like the Americans who sought 
to undermine the Austrian army during the World 
War, John Devoy had done his work for Ireland among 
the poverty-recruits of the British army, and he had 
helped to make England uncertain whether Irishmen in 
uniform would kill Irishmen not in uniform as promptly 
as they should. The prospect that spread before Ire- 

297 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

land in 1875 was not, however, one of armed resistance. 
The fiasco of 1866-67 ended that hope. What John 
Devoy believed, after Pamell had developed his policy, 
was that he could lend Pamell just that kind of non- 




contractual assistance which Pamell was later to lend 
to Gladstone. It was the intelligent coordination of 
constitutional and illegal agitation. But it needed no 
treaty, no document, no conspiracy. All it needed 
was confidence on the part of the supreme council for 

298 



The Land War 

Ireland in the genuine national tendency of Parnell's 
parliamentary activity. (The Fenians called them- 
selves the National party.) Once it was clear that 
Parnell was at least dead in earnest about landlordism, 
John Devoy was with him ; and while the supreme coun- 
cil did not follow Devoy, the local Fenians did. 

The man who made the bridge between Parnell and 
the American Fenians was born, strangely enough, the 
same year as Parnell himself, and, like Parnell, he was 
to spend most of his youth in England. But while Par- 
nell was reared in a country-house and lived in England 
with tutors, Michael Davitt came into the world in a 
hut in Mayo, and when eviction swept his father and 
mother out of their holding they "had to beg through 
the streets of England for bread." They settled, at 
last, in Lancashire. Michael Davitt went to work as 
a child in a cotton-mill. Before he was twelve his right 
arm was mangled and had to be amputated. He be- 
came a messenger in the local post-office. Later, he 
found himself at home among fellow-immigrants, and, 
while Parnell was still a student at Magdalene College, 
he was carrying a rifle in the attack on Ches'ter 
Castle, 1867. 

299 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

In 1870 he was tried for shipping arms to Ireland, 
and sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude. After 
serving seven years and seven months he was released 
from Dartmoor. He was a pre-Celt of the Connacht 
type — tall, dark, swarthy, with a marked combination 
of fire and gentleness. He and his fellow-Fenians — 
McCarthy, Bryan, and Chambers — ^were received in 
Ireland not as ticket-of-leave convicts but as political 
prisoners. Parnell asked them to breakfast the morn- 
ing after their arrival in Dublin. On that morning 
one of them — McCarthy — ^had barely reached Par- 
nell's room at Morrison's Hotel before he collapsed and 
died. The fact that many churches refused his body 
shows the strong clerical feeling against Fenianism 
that still remained. 

Davitt was much impressed by the young parlia- 
mentary leader. Possibly, he says in "The Fall of 
Feudalism in Ireland," one is very impressionable on 
coming back to the world after years in prison. "It 
is like coming into the sunshine and among the flowers 
after a lifetime in the depths of a coal-pit. Making 
due allowance for this exceptional state of mind, Mr. 
Parnell appeared to me to be much superior to his 
recommendations. He struck me at once with the 
power and directness of his personality. There was 

300 



The Land War 

the proud, resolute bearing of a man of conscious 
strength, with a mission, wearing no affectation, but 
without a hint of Celtic character or a trait of its 
racial enthusiasm. *An Englishman of the strongest 
type, moulded for an Irish purpose,' was my thought. 
. . . He expressed, as I am sure he felt, a genuine 
sympathy for those who had undergone the ordeal of 
penal servitude, with its nameless indignities and priva- 
tions. 'I would not face it,' I recollect him saying. 
*It would drive me mad. Solitude and silence are too 
horrible to think of. I would kill a warder and get 
hanged. . . .' " 

Still a Fenian, Davitt had reflected much in prison 
on the defects of secret societies based on quantity 
rather than quality. He had made up his mind that 
Ireland needed, first of all, an organization of men of 
separatist principles, whether moral-force men or not, 
and then immediate issues kept alive before the people 
—"A war against landlordism for a root settlement of 
the land question, the better housing of laborers, doing 
away with the need for workhouses, and capturing the 
municipalities for nationalism." 

This policy he discussed with ParneU on a railroad 
journey to Lancashire, To the public program Par- 
neU assented. As to becoming a Fenian, he answered, 

301 



The Story of the Irish Nation 



(6 



slowly but clearly: 'No, I will never join any political 
secret society, oathbound or otherwise. It would hin- 
der and not assist me in my work in Ireland/ '^ 

Perhaps from this, perhaps from other things, 
Davitt concluded that "Mr. Pamell never went in 
thought or in act a revolutionary inch, as an Irish 
nationalist, further than Henry Grattan." 

15 

It was in 1878 that Davitt reached America. He 
found John Devoy entering "loyally into the most dif- 
ficult task of inducing men who had hitherto opposed 
all moral-force politics to give support to the new line 
of action.'^ Devoy "brought most of the leading mem- 
bers of the Clan-na-Gael round to his views, and the 
work done by him in this way, and in line with a corre- 
sponding labor by Patrick Ford of the 'Irish World' 
and John Boyle O'Reilly of the 'Boston Pilot' . . . 
paved the way for the success of Mr. PamelPs and Mr. 
Dillon's tour a year subsequently, and to the starting 
of the auxiliary Land League of America in 1880.'* 

It was on this visit that Davitt became a friend and 
disciple of Henry George. Later he tried to launch 
Ireland into the enterprise of land nationalization. It 
was an idea for which neither British nor Irish parlia- 

30£ 



The Land War 

mentarians were prepared; and Davitt yielded to the 
counter-policy of peasant-proprietorship. 

By organizing America for Pamellism, Davitt gave 
an immense resource in money and sympathy to the 
land war. Now he returned to build up the support 
of Ireland. 

During the period that Davitt was in prison Par- 
nell had looked over the house of commons with his 
engineering eye. He had no romantic notions as to 
this stuiFy, muddle-headed assemblage of political 
pawns. And he had no towering respect for English 
public policy. He had learned from his fiery mother 
the patriotic American version of the English. "We 
have no objection to the English people; we object to 
the English dominion. We would not have it in Amer- 
ica. Why should they have it in Ireland? Why are 
the English so jealous of any outside interference in 
their affairs, and why are they always trying to dip 
their fingers in everybody's pie? The English are hated 
in America for their grasping policy; they are hated 
everywhere for their arrogance, greed, cant, and hypoc- 
risy. No country must have national rights or na- 
tional aspirations but England.'' So Pamell's mother, 
who was Early American. 

It was, perhaps, in the memory of such prejudices 

308 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

that Pamell, with Joseph Biggar, the little Belfast 
pork-butcher, began the famous game of obstruction 
in the house of commons. This game was a retaliation 
on the pooh-poohing of Irish questions. While Isaac 
Butt squirmed and agonized, the strange team of Par- 
nell and Biggar would take turns at wasting hours of 
parliamentary time. But their sabotage was not 
merely mechanical. They probed the British soul. 
They asked awkward questions about recent attempts 
to destroy the independence of the Transvaal. They 
forced the Government into an enraged defense of 
flogging in the army. They irritated, goaded, and 
outraged those comfortable gentlemen who for years 
had yawned at Isaac Butt. 

16 

Meanwhile, among the small tenants especially in 
the West of Ireland, the blind resentment of the land 
system was becoming acute. The days of the sailing- 
vessel were over. Steamships were already bringing 
colonial and American produce into the British market. 
This promoted the clearance policy, by which large 
tracts of good land were turned into grazing ranches. 
The occupiers of these tracts were being automatically 
forced on poor land at rack-rents. 

304 



The Land War 

Davitt was much closer to economic realities than 
Parnell. He saw that this misery could only be ended 
if Irishmen grasped an economic policy and learned 
to organize. He went back to the people in the West 
of Ireland. He met farmers, talked with provision- 
dealers, stood with the men at work in the bogs or 
reclaiming the stony fields. He saw unmistakably that 
a storm was gathering. There would be a famine 
again in 1879 ; that was likely. Lord Leitrim and his 
two body-guards had been killed in 1878. Leitrim hap- 
pened to be a brutal man who took his tenants^ daugh- 
ters by force, but his assassination was a sign of rising 
passion. The problem for Davitt was to control and 
direct this passion for an economic and political end. 

The neighborhood mind, as usual, was muddled or 
incoherent. But in disturbed Mayo he found a case 
made to his hand. A priest, executor for his brother, 
had decided to evict the tenants whose rack-rents were 
in arrears. The local press was silent: it would not 
help the tenants against a priest. But the local 
Fenians had no such scruples. They were Catholics, 
but they did not regard Irish politics as a legitimate 
piece of church property. They knew that the priest, 
in affairs of this world, was often quite as ruthless and 
dangerous as the British Empire itself, and that over 

305 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

and over again he had lined up with the British Empire 
to fight against Ireland. Many Irishmen did not for- 
get the famous edict that "hell was not hot enough or 
eternity long enough" for Fenians ; Father Burke^s 
landlordism was not an entirely unwelcome object-les- 
son to the seven thousand Mayo men who attended the 
meeting. 

The success of this meeting was a people's success. | 
It immediately brought the Catholic church into action. ^ 
Dr. MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, made a brave at- j 
tempt to compel orderly agitation, even though the \ 
people might endure famine in 1879 as they had en- | 
dured it in 1846. He declared in an open letter that \ 
''night patrolling, acts and words of menace, with arms 
in hand, the profanation of what is most sacred in \ 
religion — all the result of lawless and occult associa- ; 
tion," was impious and disorderly, and must be stopped. \ 
He did not explain the degree of educated public opin- ! 
ion and organized self-government which the oppressed \ 
must control before they can dispense with terrorism. ■ 
He simply stated that "unhallowed combinations lead \ 
invariably to disaster," and said nothing about the hal- \ 
lowed servility which had equally led to disaster in j 
1846. He condemned a meeting at Westport which ; 

306 i 



1 

...... J 



The Land War 

Parnell had been asked to attend. But to Pamell, so 
used to the British lion, the Lion of the Fold of Judah 
was not so terrifying. "Will I attend? Certainly. 
Why not? I have promised to be there, and you can 
count upon my keeping that promise.'^ For a Protes- 
tant leader, Davitt felt, it was the most courageously 
wise act of his political career. He came to Westport. 
He told the tenants: "A fair rent is a rent the tenant 
can reasonably pay according to the times, but in 
bad times a tenant cannot be expected to pay as much 
as he did in good times three or four years ago. If 
such rents are insisted upon, a repetition of the scenes 
of 1847 and 1848 will be witnessed. Now, what must 
we do in order to induce the landlords to see the posi- 
tion? You must show them that you intend to hold a 
firm grip of your homesteads and lands. You must 
not allow yourselves to be dispossessed as your fathers 
were dispossessed in 1847." 

Pamell understood the landlord's position. He was 
a landlord. There was reasonableness in his speech, 
and clear confidence, but that phrase, "hold a firm grip 
of your homesteads," was meat and drink to the Irish 
tenant. It was repeated a hundred times a day, like 
St. Patrick's prayers in the sleet and the rain. It 
became the core of the Land League. It stood between 

S07 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

Ireland and famine. The opportunism of the church, \ 

not unnatural considering the back door which was i 

always open to English diplomats at the Vatican, had \ 

at last been met by a man of independent mind. Par- | 

nell was not like the O'Connell of 1847, an inaudible i 

old man tearfully pleading to rows of relaxed stomachs i 

in the house of commons. Pamell pointed at the i 

I 
stomach of the house of commons a steel blade to whose i 

language that organ defers. Five thousand tenants \ 

marched into Tuam to give the archbishop a sample of \ 

their earnestness. And to the Gaels of Mayo came a ■ 

Norman-Irishman, John Dillon; a Dano-Irishman, A. \ 

J. Kettle; a Cambro-Irishman, Matthew Harris, all ; 

giving heart to the feudal slaves of Ireland. j 

There were many priests, sons of the soil, to see i 

at once that the abject submission of the great famine i 

could never be tolerated. Within a few years, indeed, ; 

the church itself was using these whole-hearted men to I 

capture the land agitation, ■ 

18 I 

The Land League, formed in 1879, had four extrem- \ 
ists among its seven officers — Davitt, Biggar, Brennan, \ 
and Egan. It was obvious policy for Pamell to visit i 
America, which he reached early in 1880. He was well \ 

308 \ 



.J 



The Land War 

received by the Irish, addressed Congress in a speech 
that reposed sedately on the wisdom of John Stuart 
Mill, found himself called a liar by the New York 
"Nation," and was asked to withdraw his banking 
account by the discreet Morgans. His attitude was 
definite regarding landlordism. "The men who till the 
soil,'' he said, "will also own it." But he linked self- 
government with land reform. "When we have under- 
mined English misgovemment we have paved the way 
for Ireland to take her place among the nations of 
ohe earth. And let us not forget that that is the ulti- 
mate goal at which all we Irishmen aim. None of us, 
whether we be in America or in Ireland, or wherever 
we may be, will be satisfied until we have destroyed the 
last link which keeps Ireland bound to England." 

These words were spoken not only to the Clan-na- 
Gael, but to America, to the self-governing colonies, to 
Gladstone, No one knew their significance better than 
the Liberal leader. More than seventy years of age, 
nearly forty years older than Parnell, he saw beyond 
obvious disturbances to the "New Departure" in the 
Irish struggle. He realized that with the land war 
there was now opening a war on the British Empire. 
He realized that his prime antagonist was Parnell. So 
far as the land went, Gladstone saw that the Irish ten- 

309 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

ants must prove irresistible. He was prepared to sac- j 
riiice the landlords, as he had sacrificed the established 
church. In 1881, after a year of assassination and \ 
coercion, he carried fair rent, fixity of tenure, and free ' 
sale. But he had vision. He perceived plainly that j 
the Land League was in the hands of men bent on j 
something besides economic revolution, and he made ] 
up his mind that he could only destroy that revolution | 
by competing with Parnell for Ireland. On his side in | 
this tremendous duel was, above everything, his vast j 
moral prestige. He could, emancipated as he was from I 
Tory prejudices, convince the world that Parnell was ; 
a lawless, a seditious agitator and he himself the broad, \ 
sane, large-minded friend of Ireland. To convey this ■ 
idea to sentimental middle-class Britain would be sim- : 
pie. He had racial suspicion on tap when the Irish 
were too active, and moral fervor on tap when Britain 
was too slow. But the real fight, as he saw in 1881, ; 
was to cut off Parnell from his base of supplies, to ' 
sever him from the parliamentary party and to sever | 
him from the Irish people. By "severe and strong | 
denunciation^' of Parnellism he hoped to arouse the | 
Catholic Church and the timid Irish. By coming for- '\ 
ward with local government he hoped to draw off the i 
Home Rulers. "All we can do," he said in 1881, re- | 

310 \ 

\ 



The Land War 

garding the Pamellites, "is to turn more and more the 
masses of their followers, to fine them down by good 
laws and good government," and sweeten them by 
'^judicious releases from prison." 

To kill Irish separatism by alternate coercion and 
conciliation was the Liberal policy of Gladstone. As 
a foil to Gladstone's sweetness and light Pamell could 
count on the invaluable stupidity of the landlords. 
Gladstone did not fear an armed insurrection. "The 
strength of this country is tenfold what is required 
for such a purpose." But, as he confessed, "a social 
revolution is a very different matter." And with in- 
flamed class feeling to help him, Pamell could always 
meet coercion with the cry of atrocity and conciliation 
with the cry of constancy rewarded. A chief secretary 
like Forster talked loudly of Ireland being in the hands 
of "village ruffians" (a "murder gang"). Forster sim- 
ply played into the hands of the Irish with his frenzied 
pou'ucing and prodding after "a certain limited number 
of unreasonable and mischievous men." So England 
made agitation easy. The land war, the devotion of 
the Irish people, the glamor of strength and silence, 
his restraint and stately dignity — these weapons of 
ParnelFs, Gladstone could not parry. He could only 
gather, from using Mrs. CShea as a messenger be- 

311 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

tween himself and Pamell, that the Irish hero was, after 
all, an Achilles. ParnelPs difficulty would be Eng- ' 
land's opportunity. He could only watch and wait. 

19 I 

Parnell never underestimated this master with whom 
he had to deal. A Tory democrat himself, he could ' 

easily measure and appreciate Lord Randolph j 

■i 

Churchill. A skeptic himself, he could do business with I 
the callous Joseph Chamberlain. But in Gladstone he | 
touched a creator as well as a manipulator, a man with \ 
a suffusing religion. In the duel between the British ! 
Empire and the Irish nation it was no simple task to\ 
meet the political and parliamentary resourcefulness of ^ 
Gladstone. Moreover there was the awkward moral \ 
fact that Gladstone was increasingly willing to en- ; 
counter and did encounter "a giant mass of secular 
English prejudice against Ireland.'' The queen, as | 
Gladstone admitted, had an attitude of "armed neu- j 
trality" toward a Liberal minister. In the country 
itself an "inveterate sentiment of hostility, flavored j 
with contempt," had "from time immemorial formed ! 
the basis of English tradition" about Ireland. These j 
were Gladstone's words. Such hostility and contempt, ; 
to which he himself was superior, was political senti- 1 

312 \ 



The Land War 

ment of real importance. It penetrated every class. 
It represented a strong conviction that the Irish were 
inferior and alien — if not different in color, certainly 
different in culture, in character, in faith, in ethics, 
and neither to be trusted nor respected. It amounted 
to virulent race prejudice. In rising above this sacred 
egoism (which was never fully shared by Wales or 
Scotland), Gladstone was a pioneer of the finest public 
spirit. Parnell had to admit it, though he knew only 
too well how public spirit itself could be used to under- 
mine the national position. 

The fiercest years of the land war were 1879, 1880, 
and 1881. In those years, under Parnell and Davitt, 
the people of Ireland became thoroughly aroused. By 
arresting Parnell, Davitt, Dillon, Biggar, Egan, Bren- 
nan, and the rest of the Land League for "seditious 
conspiracy," the Government simply intensified the bit- 
terness of the struggle. Outrages increased, shootings 
and burnings and murders. With each act of coercion 
the cabinet yielded on the Land Bill it was drafting. 
Finally, after twenty-two spasms of concession it pro- 
duced the act which gave to the Irish clansmen the 
modus vivendi which Henry VIII had failed to give to 
them. It was the execrated Parnell-Davitt organiza- 
tion that won this victory: "Without the Land 

313 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

League," Gladstone said in 1893, "the Act of 1881 
would not now be on the statute-book.'* 

By establishing a land commission to fix rents, the 
English handed the agitators a new weapon. To "cow 
the tyrants" became an Irish formula, and the land 
commission found itself powerless to please any one. 
The English were furious. Gladstone determined to 
have Parnell arrested, asserting grandly that "the re- 
sources of civilization are not yet exhausted." He 
did have Parnell imprisoned, locking him up in Kil- 
mainham, but by doing so, by vindicating law, order, 
the rights of property, and the freedom of the land, 
Gladstone once more inflamed the Irish, leaving them 
without their coolest head. A no-rent manifesto was 
sent from Kilmainham by Parnell and his associates. 
"Captain Moonlight," as the bands who attacked land- 
lords and land-grabbers named themselves, stepped into 
Parnell's place. Twenty murders occurred in ten 
months: a landlord's life was not a happy one. But 
the no-rent manifesto, inspired by the left wing, was 
condemned by the priests and bishops, and a wedge 
was inserted for negotiations which ended next year in 
the Kilmainham treaty between Parnell and the Gov- 
ernment. The Land Leaguers were released: an 
Arrears Bill was guaranteed to take care of the handi- 

314 



The Land War 

capped tenants, and Parnell guaranteed to slow down 
agitation. 

By this treaty Gladstone estranged himself from his 
viceroy Cowper and his chief secretary "Buckshot'* 
Forster who had labored to apply coercion: they re- 
signed. At the same time he formed a vague, promis- 
ing alliance with the dreaded Parnell, and Parnell in 
turn had reason to think that through Gladstone and 
Chamberlain he could work for a genuine national set- 
tlement. 

These plans soon received a shock. The new chief 
secretary, young Lord Frederick Cavendish, was Mrs. 
Gladstone's nephew. He and Mr. Burke, the under- 
secretary, were waylaid in Phoenix Park, Dublin, on the 
evening of May 6, 1882, and stabbed to death. It was 
the first time that any prominent official had been 
killed. The murder of Cavendish, who tried to beat 
off the assailants with an umbrella, gave a sensation 
of horror and pity to the world. Who were the mur- 
derers? Parnell, Dillon, and Davitt at once issued a 
statement to the Irish people saying that the cowardly 
and unprovoked assassination of a "friendly stranger" 
"stained the hospitable name of Ireland." Behind the 
scenes the unimpassioned Parnell went to pieces. He 

315 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

wrote to Gladstone, saying that if Gladstone thought 
that his leadership prejudiced the Irish cause, he would 
resign. Gladstone thought his conduct "very praise- 
worthy'^ and counseled him to remain. But the con- 
ciliation policy was impossible with England frantic; 
coercion, and outrage, were renewed. 

It was not till next year that a Dublin alderman of 
the most respectable and even sanctimonious character, 
Carey, by name, turned informer on the small unknown 
group which had arranged the assassination of Burke. 
This group called itself the Invincibles. It believed 
the time had come for a policy of terror, and had pre- 
pared most carefully its plot against Burke. Through 
Carey's information five of the Invincibles were con- 
victed and executed, and nine others imprisoned. Carey 
was later smuggled on board a steamer for Australia, 
but a man named O'Donnell booked on the same steamer 
and shot Carey off Cape Colony. O'Donnell was 
hanged. 

The Phoenix Park murders, the Maamtrasna agra- 
rian murders, and several attempted political assassina- 
tions — judges and policemen — gave England a moral 
leg-up which was badly needed. Parnell looked with 
disfavor on this development. He valued, as Mr. Ford 



«16 



o 



The Land War 

of New York did not value, the chance to extract a 
measure of self-government out of the house of com- 
mons ; and he had no desire to hand his opponents un- 
limited ammunition. The Clan-na-Gael, however, sus- 
pected Parnell of moderation and was decidedly restive. 
Davitt was impatient to bring forward land national- 
ization, and Dillon wished to keep up the fight against 
landlords. Parnell was under this severe political 
strain. The strain was increased by his personal rela- 
tions. In 1881 he had met, and fallen in love with, an 
Englishwoman. She was the daughter of Sir John Page 
Wood, a clergyman, and the wife of Captain O'Shea. 
O'Shea was a dashing young soldier in a crack regi- 
ment when he had married twenty-year-old Katherine 
Wood. By the time she was thirty-four (when she 
met Parnell) they were living in friction and partial 
separation, O'Shea being more interested in his racing 
stable and his mining adventures in Spain than in any- 
thing else. At first, he had quarreled with his wife 
about Parnell, and actually challenged Parnell to a 
duel. Then he backed down. "From the date of this 
bitter quarrel," Katherine O'Shea recorded in 1914, 
^'Parnell and I were one, without further scruple, with- 
out fear, and without remorse." O'Shea and Mrs, 
O'Shea remained on friendly terms till 1886, and Par- 

317 






The Story of the Irish Nation 

nell actually forced O'Shea on the Irish party in that 
year. Mrs. O'Shea's biography of Parnell, published 
in 1914, revealed the tortuous deception, the intense 
and devoted passion, the hateful tragedy, of this rela- 
tionship. She and Parnell were not married till 1891, 
four months before Parnell died. Their intimacy was 
generally known, however, for years before the O'Shea 
divorce suit. Mrs. O'Shea constantly acted as the 
intermediary between Gladstone and Parnell. When- 
ever Gladstone needed Parnell in an emergency he sent 
for him to Mrs. O'Shea's house. 

The stresses of Pamell's life and of his party were 
relieved in 1883 from an unexpected quarter. With 
the connivance of the English Government and at the 
instance of a person called Errington the pope took it 
on himself to condemn a "tribute'^ which was being 
collected for Parnell. The tribute had languished at 
£7,700 until the pope denounced it. It thereupon rose 
steadily to £37,000. The Pamellite stock was high. 

It was so high that both parties in England quickly 
conceived of a home rule program. On every side, in 
every well-organized party, there is a wide assortment 
of ideals. Lord Carnarvon, who had made a reputa- 

318 



The Land War 

tion in Canada, came forward as the Tory Irish viceroy 
with an address on colonial self-government. In a few 
months Irish crime was no longer the topic, but Irish 
needs, Irish rights. In an empty London drawing- 
room, vacant for the summer. Lord Salisbury's Irish 
viceroy had a secret interview with Pamell. Even 
Lord Salisbury, feudal to the limit, talked of revising 
the constitution. 

The election came in 1885. The franchise had been 
enlarged in Ireland by 400,000 votes. It was guessed 
that this new army of country voters might reveal a 
"deep conservatism." Instead they obliterated Tory 
candidates forever. Parnell was now ready to do 
business with the Tories. 

The Tory vote, however, was too low to be secure. 
Even with the help of the Irish, it could barely pull 
through. And the alliance of the Irish was too dear 
at the price. 

In this predicament of the Tories Gladstone made an 
interesting political move. He knew that, imperially 
considered, an Irish solution was most desirable: a 
moderate, safe, non-nationalistic solution. He knew 
that with a house of lords anti-Irish to a man this 
solution could only be carried with and by the Tories. 
He guessed that under these circumstances Parnell 

319 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

would take virtually anything he was given. So he 
invited Arthur Balfour to tell his uncle, Salisbury, that 
the Liberals would support the Tories if they'd legis- 
late. But the party game is the party game. Salis- 
bury saw nothing for the Tories, as such, in this joint- 
stock limited liability venture. He rejected it, turned 
from conciliation to coercion, and soon was dislodged 
by the Irish vote. Then Gladstone took the Govern- 
ment with the Irish on his side. His Home Rule Bill 
was defeated, however, and within a year Salisbury, 
back in office, was announcing that the native Irish, 
like the Hottentots, were incapable of self-government. 
They were only fit to use knives and slugs, he said. 
He recommended twenty years of "resolute" govern- 
ment. And he suggested, instead of sinking money in 
a state purchase of land, the deportation of a million 
Irishmen. * 

Gladstone's defeated home rule measure cost him the 
support of Chamberlain, John Bright, Hartington, and 
many others. John Bright's defection was the most 
serious. It exhibited at one and the same time an 
impatience with Gladstone's craftiness and an impa- 
tience with Gladstone's tolerance of "rebels." 

The rejection of this biU, and of a Land Bill to meet 
the slump in agricultural prices, had an apparent effect 

mo 



The Land War 

in relaxing Parnell's will. He was "sick unto death" 
after the nervous drain of ten years* warfare. When 
the landlords became aggressive, under Lord Salisbury 
and Arthur Balfour, he was not anxious to renew the 
fight. A perpetual Coercion Bill was part of the 
"resolute" program. This did not arouse him. Bal- 
four's prompt assertion that "the police were in no way 
to blame" when they wantonly killed three onlookers at 
the Mitchelstown meeting drew from Gladstone, not 
from Parnell, the agitator's cry : "Remember Mitchels- 
town !" The Plan of Campaign, devised by Dillon and 
O'Brien to countenance the tenants in reducing their 
own rents and paying these reduced rents into a politi- 
cal fund, only aroused him to the point of condemning 
it. And, in accepting £10,000 from Cecil Rhodes, he 
spoke of the Hom.e Rule Bill as "a final and satisfactory 
settlement of the long-standing dispute between Great 
Britain and Ireland." 

23 

So constitutional did Parnell seem that even the 
Irish Unionists might have cultivated him. Instead, 
the "London Times," the journalistic holy of holies, 
enlivened the victorious Conservatives of England in 
1887 by a series of articles called "Pamellism and 

821 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Crime." One feature of this series was a facsimile let- 
ter of ParnelPs, apparently indicating that Parnell 
had been hypocritical in condemning the Phoenix Park 
murderers. Parnell laconically informed the house 
that this letter was a forgery. The attorney-general, 
retained by the "Times," went out of his way in a 
lawsuit to revive suspicion. Parnell asked the Tory 
house of commons to appoint a committee to investi- 
gate. They refused. Instead, they appointed a judi- 
cial commission to sift Parnellism and "crime" without 
any inquiry into agrarian law, economic facts, or the 
social circumstances attending the land war — in Lord 
Morley's words, "one of the ugliest things done in the 
name and under the forms of law in this island during 
the century." 

The "Times" had spent £30,000 in procuring 
through the secretary of the Irish landlord alliailce the 
material with which to destroy Parnell. It actually 
had paid £2530 for eleven precious letters. It had 
made no investigation or test of the authenticity of 
the famous facsimile letter. On the word of Houston 
of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union it gave its 
readers the corroboration of their favorite prejudices 
in the looking-glass of facsimile. 

But what the "London Times" had mirrored in its 

322 



The Land War 

campaign of malice and hatred was simply the poor 
invention of a broken, quailing grafter called Pigott. 
On the witness-stand Pigott's forgery was pitilessly ex- 
posed, mainly by his misspelling, "hesitency," His 
guilt was complete: it led back from this expensive 
screed to years of "investigation" in which he had lived 
well after many lean years; required only to produce 
political skeletons and unwholesome garbage of every 
description. He had a good run for the "Times" 
money, but so agonizing was the undressing of this life 
of shame, and so awful the figure beneath, that Pigott 
fled to Madrid before his testimony was finished and, 
traced by a detective, killed himself rather than return. 

The boomerang that the "Times" had hurled at Par- 
nell recoiled on itself. Its circulation collapsed. The 
Tory plot to annihilate him failed. But his triumph 
was not to last long. For an inducement placed at 
£20,000, believed to have been supplied by a practical 
politician of the new school. Captain 0*Shea named 
Pamell in a divorce suit in 1889. The suit was pend- 
ing for nearly a year. A defense was expected but it 
was not defended, and on November 17, 1890, the 
decree was granted to Captain O'Shea. 

323 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

This verdict was calmly received by the Irish party^ 
by the National League, by the Nationalist sympa- 
thizers, and by the church. From the envoys visiting 
America — Dillon, O'Brien, T. P. O'Connor — came en- 
thusiastic support for Parnell. But these prompt en- 
dorsements and assertions of loyalty were not unani- 
mous. England of the upper class was not shocked to 
hear that Parnell's long devotion to Mrs. O'Shea was 
at last disclosed. Intelligent people did not confuse 
this sincere devotion with the lechery, the drunkenness, 
the homosexuality, the multiplied scandal and shame, 
which were not unknown in England. Nelson's name, 
moreover, had been mentioned in England. There was 
a statue in Trafalgar Square. But it was not the real 
values, the honest estimate, of this divorce suit which 
mattered in the least. It was its effect on votes. What 
would the National Liberal Federation meeting say at 
Sheffield .P Gladstone, more than eighty, had his ear 
to the ground, solemnly shaking his grave politician's 
head. Wait and watch, he wrote Morley. Look out 
for "our Nonconformist friends.'^ He recalled with 
some humor that Nelson's "Life" had been circulated 
by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 
but he guessed that Parnell would n't get away with it. 
And, if he did n^t, if the scales went down against him, 

324j 



The Land War 

Gladstone knew that he could jump in on the heavy 
side, pedestal and all. 

Pamell had never concealed his hatred of English 
hypocrisy. Now he was doomed. Morley reported ta 
Gladstone from Sheffield, "the deep instinct for moral 
order is awake." W. T. Stead, the discoverer of Wliite 
Slaves and the voice of Puritanism, condemned Parnell 
as immoral. So did the leading Methodist, Hugh Price 
Hughes. So did Michael Davitt in the "Labor World.** 
These sincere accents swelled audibly; and with them 
the yelp of the man-hunt, the keen snarl of passion 
and prejudice, the baying of the wolves. 

Five days told Gladstone everything. He ap- 
proached the Irish party with his suave, benignant air :. 
^'Notwithstanding the splendid services rendered by 
Parnell to his country, his continuance at the present 
moment in the leadership would be productive of con- 
sequences disastrous in the highest degree to the cause 
of Ireland. . . . The continuance I speak of would not 
only place many hearty and effective friends of the 
Irish cause in a position of great embarrassment, but 
would render my retention of the leadership of the 
Liberal party, based as it has been mainly upon the 
prosecution of the Irish cause, almost a nullity." 

Almost a nullity ! The Irish members suddenly real- 

325 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

ized that for five years they had been depending more '\ 

i 
and more on British sympathy, British assistance, ) 

British association. They had learned to repose on 

Gladstone as on Abraham's bosom. And now, because j 

of the invaluable nonconformist conscience, Gladstone ; 

could plead to them his immense, his pathetic difficul- 

ties. The cause of Ireland, the Irish cause, was his \ 

life-work. Would they not dethrone Parnell? 

That was Gladstone's frontal attack. In the rear, ' 

of course, was the Catholic Church. "The pope,^ ^ 

murmured Gladstone, "has now clearly got a command- , 

ment under which to pull him up." In 1881 it was | 

Gladstone who, through Cardinal Newman, had for- : 

i 

warded the police-notes of speeches by Irish priests to \ 

the supreme pontiff, out of sheer regard for Ireland, \ 

*'in this hour of her peril and her hope." The scandal \ 

of the church in politics still appalled him, but the \ 

supreme pontiff had played the English game on that \ 

occasion. Now the cleric in politics could be counted \ 

on again. \ 

25 \ 

What would Parnell do, placed between Gladstone's I 
Irish party in front, and Gladstone's Catholic Church \ 
in the rear.^ Would he acknowledge that he and the i 

326 \ 



The Land War 

woman he loved were caught in sin, and would he, as 
Gladstone's messenger, Morley requested, withdraw 
from leadership "as a concession due to feeling in 
England'^? Parnell declined. He said that "if he 
once let go, it was all over.'^ ^'His manner throughout 
was perfectly cool and quiet, and his unresonant voice 
was shaken. He was paler than usual, and now and 
then a wintry smile passed over his face." 

That was the end of Parnell. In Committee-Room 
15 his party chose Gladstone and English Liberalism. 
And in Ireland, first in the by-election in Kilkenny and 
later elsewhere, the priests marshaled the country- 
people to the voting-booths. By two to one the people 
voted against his candidates. 

Dr. Croke, the archbishop of Cashel, put the case 
against Parnell in a few words : "All sorry for Parnell, 
but still, in God's name, let him retire quietly and with 
good grace from the leadership. If he does so, the 
Irish party will be kept together, the honorable alli- 
ance with Gladstonian Liberals maintained, success at 
general election secured, home rule certain. If he does 
not retire, alliance will be dissolved, election lost, Irish 

327 



The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

i 
party seriously damaged if not wholly broken up, home '\ 

rule indefinitely postponed, coercion perpetuated, j 

evicted tenants hopelessly crushed, and the public con- ' 

science outraged. The [PamelPs] manifesto flat and \ 

otherwise discreditable." 

I 

The truth was that Gladstone's published terms, 

compelling the Irish party to reverse their election of \ 

Pamell as leader, spelled subjection to English policy. 

The center of Ireland's political gravity had shifted to : 

England. This suited Gladstone. And so long as i 

Pamell was beaten in Ireland he had succeeded in his i 

main obj ect : reducing the Irish problem to a municipal : 

problem. He never wavered in his desire to see Par- 

nell beaten. "I would rather see Ireland disunited than i 

i 
see it Parnellite. . . . We are now, I think, freed from \ 

the enormous danger of seeing Pamell master in Ire- i 

land." He called the Parnellite voters of Kilkenny ! 

"rogues" or ''fools." \ 

The rogues and fools fought for Pamell in every 

community, and Pamell threw himself into every con- i 

test with despairing energy. After his first attempt | 

to domineer, though cornered, he had offered to resign, I 

provided Gladstone would give certain guarantees to i 

Ireland. But Gladstone was already sure of the party, : 

sure of the church. He offered no guarantees. The \ 

328 ; 



The Land War 

fight was carried through Kilkenny, Sligo, Carlow. 
The spirit of each election was savage. 

What will be the result of the general election, he 
asked his biographer Barry O'Brien. 

"I should think that you will come back with about 
^\Q followers, and I should not be surprised if you 
came back absolutely alone." 

"Well," he answered, "if I do come back absolutely 
alone, one thing is certain, I shall then represent a 
party whose independence will not be sapped." 

The strain of the fight, the conflict and confusion of 
motives, the physical exhaustion, brought him to the 
danger-point. A chill at Creggs sent him back to 
Brighton with acute rheumatism. On October 6, 1891, 
he failed and died, at the age of forty-five. 

So long as Parnell had rallied the people, the con- 
stitutional movement kept its national spear-head. 
Without Parnell it became no more revolutionary than 
a broomstick. A great deal of legislative power was 
still controlled by the Irish members, and in the gen- 
eration following Parnell a great deal of admirable 
legislation was secured. But without being a declared 
or even convinced separatist, Parnell gave the Irish 

329 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Gael what he needed — a leader who had not one drop 
of slave-blood in him. John Dillon, T. M. Healy, T. 
P. O'Connor, William O'Brien — these men had been 
brought to heel by Gladstone as against Pamell, and 
even if they were as free as the wind, their action seemed 
bloodless and timid. It was not Pamell's so-called 
aristocratic bearing which won the Irish; it was his 
mettle. His nature had something cold and hard in 
it. "I am a man and I have told these children what 
they want.'' So he said in 1890. This arrogance 
hurt him ; but in the English parliament he had changed 
the hunted to the hunter. He was like the race mem- 
ory of a hero, half-God, half-human — "tameless and 
swift and proud.'' He held the Irish heart until he 
was seen as a furtive lover, a man in shame and 
disguise. 

When he was gone the champions and heroes who 
hooked laborers' cottages out of the imperial grab-bag 
did not enable Ireland to dream dreams. The break- 
ing of Parnell was more than the loss of a parliamen- 
tary leader. It was the loss of a national idol. The 
Irish let their weapons fall when their leader was slain. 

To become leaders in themselves, no longer enslaved 
to a personality, was the task of the rebuilders of the 
Irish nation. It was a slow process, but in the dreary 

330 



The Land War 

emptiness of politics after Parnell the Irish imagina- 
tion sought this escape from England and Westminster. 
Meanwhile, Gladstone believed that Ireland was at last 
frock-coated and in its right mind. 



631 



o 



CHAPTER XI 

THE COMING OF SINN FEIN 
1 

N the surface of events the downfall of Pamell 



looked more tragic, more ruinous, than any i 
episode of two centuries. It tore the nation in two : it 1 
ended a great militant^s career. ] 
Parnell in one sense was the best general Ireland had ! 
ever had. When he entered the house of commons he \ 
found the Irish parliamentarians like sheep without a i 
shepherd, contemptuously patronized by British Tories j 
and mildly tolerated by Liberals. Parnell contrived 
in a few years to get rid of those Trish members who i 
took their tone not from Ireland but from the house 
of commons, feeling they were members of a gentle- 
manly club in which their chief duty was to conciliate : 
their Tory neighbors. He recruited earnest men who j 
saw themselves as the representatives of a nation per- ; 
haps the most desolate and surely the most outraged ' 
in northern Europe. This new party, organized as 
shock troops under a strict command, stamped the I 

332 i 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

Irish cause and Parnell's personality into British 
political consciousness. Anxious apprehension sup- 
planted the old tolerant, patronizing attitude. Parnell 
aroused class superstition and race prejudice, he was 
feared and hated, but he forced British Liberalism to 
make the Irish cause its own, and he drove the Tories 
into competition for his support. Even when he re- 
laxed his agitation and followed the Liberals in their 
conduct of the fight, he remained the most formidable 
figure in British politics. 

With the fall of Parnell this instantly changed. The 
constitutional movement passed from Ireland to 
Britain, from nationalism to Liberalism, from in- 
sistence to compromise, from life to death. Gladstone 
did not relax. In 1893 he re-introduced the Home 
Rule bill and fought for it with supreme skill, but his 
greatest efforts could not procure a British majority 
inside the commons. The Irish vote alone brought the 
bill to the house of lords: there it was dismissed with 
disdain. 

When Gladstone retired in 1894 the Irish cause lost 
its position even in the Liberal program. The gallantry 
of English sympathizers like Wilfrid Scawen Blunt had 
done little to alter the leaden indifference of Britain. 
But this feebleness of Liberalism was the negative side 

333 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

\ 

of the Pamell tragedy. The positive side was felt in ■ 

Ireland itself, where counsel was divided and passion ' 
was fierce and barren. 

At no period, perhaps, had the faults and pitiful 
weaknesses of human character been more revealed than 

in this day of Parnellism: the politicians running here ; 

and there looking for the best bargain, the newspapers 

I 

full of windy preachments, the priests and the bishops j 

influencing the people in outrageous partisanship, the \ 

whole country a seething mass of prejudice, anger? ^ 

savage insult, personal abuse, and terrorism, with \ 

England enjo3dng the spectacle and feeding the flame. ; 

Such rancorous words were spoken in this period, and \ 

so little charity was preserved even by the heroes of \ 

the occasion, that sane public life seemed an impos- : 
sibility for the future. It was, without bloodshed, a 

period of civil war. ' 

So, to all appearances, the fall of Pamell was a i 

dark calamity. It cost Ireland its leader, it created a ; 

mania of controversy, revealing above everything else i 

the lack of trained political mind. j 

2 \ 

But this wildness of Parnellite and anti-Pamellite \ 

was not fatal to Ireland. In its destructive eruption \ 

334 \ 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

the country was to purge itself of its preoccupation 
with parliament. It was to turn away from West- 
minster and to regain its national spirit. 

For conflict with England was, in the end, an acci- 
dent and interruption of Irish life. Since 1800 politics 
had indeed been compulsive. The Penal Laws had 
stripped the native Irish of property and power in 
the eighteenth century. The rising of '98 had been 
a convulsion due to the return of native vitality. 
Brought handcuffed into the Union, the Irish people 
had been forced to seek whatever practical social 
amelioration was possible. The people were without 
Catholic representatives even in the imperial parlia- 
ment. They were, as observers like Sir Walter Scott 
had testified, the most miserable of serfs. They had 
no capital, no economic or political control, no strength 
even to throw off so unjust an exaction as the tithe. 
Poverty, the result of bad land tenure, was the first 
fact of Irish life. It swamped Ireland like a Holland 
with the dykes open. It kept the land in a sub-national 
condition. Until the nineties a few thousand land- 
lords lived luxuriously but most of them really lived 
meanly. A few thousand merchants and liquor-dealers 
had good bank-accounts and fat investments (outside 
the country), but most of the small traders and hun- 

335 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

dreds of the publicans were submerged in dingy, mel- 
ancholy, poverty-stricken routine. The bishops re- 
ceived many large contributions from generous and 
pious Catholics. New cathedrals and numerous 
churches, one or two of them beautiful, replaced the 
poor chapels which had served Ireland during its 
harassed centuries. But outside Northeast Ulster, 
which was independent of agriculture, Ireland was a 
land the most wretched and forlorn in northern Europe. 
Two million of the people were practically in servitude 
still. Two things were needed to change this abnormal 
social state — one, to get rid of landlordism; the other, 
to move from agrarian to agricultural reform. Only 
by new laws could land tenure be corrected; and this 
necessity drove Ireland to Westminster. 



Driven to Westminster in the fight against landlord- 
ism, the native Irish naturally kept their eyes on 
Westminster so long as Parnell was battling for home 
rule. But home rule was of little or no interest to 
Ireland, regarded simply as a measure of autonomy. 
It was not discussed in Ireland in its details as an 
intricate piece of legislation. It was of interest and 
concern only as a symbol of nationalism; and when 

336 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

nationalism turned into a war between Parnellites and 
anti-Pamellites the actual terms of home rule troubled 
no one in Ireland. 

The real Ireland, in fact, could never be understood 
merely by tracing its constitutional relation to Eng- 
land. The real Ireland could not be measured, as 
Australians well-being or Canada's or New Zealand's 
might be measured, by a happy constitutional adjust- 
ment. These commonwealths and dominions were, after 
all, offshoots and children of England. Ireland was 
not an offshoot or child of England, any more than 
France was. Years before the Angles or Saxons had 
sprung from their lairs, Ireland had flourished as a 
civilization. It had welcomed St. Patrick a thousand 
years before the American continent was discovered 
by Europe. It had a memory, a personality, a sub- 
stance quite distinct from the memory and personality 
and substance of John Bull's island. It was never 
John Bull's Other Island except by military conquest. 
In no mystical sense, but in the true sense that one 
child differs from another or one handclasp from an- 
other, Ireland reserved within its borders a something 
which was beyond the scope or competence of British 
governing. It was the sense of this difference, not a 
desire for federation with the empire, which gave Ire- 

337 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

land its interest in the home rule question. And once | 
Pamell was gone as a national leader the vitality of i 

Ireland groped for a new national expression. . 

I 

That nationalism sought to revive the old forms of I 
the Gael. An Irishman by affiliation, Dr. Douglas \ 
Hyde, saw with something like agony the threatened j 
death of the spoken Gaelic tongue. This, in any nor- | 
mal country, would have been the concern of legisla- \ 
tors, but Dr. Hyde knew that the Gaelic inheritance : 
meant less than nothing to England. England had : 
smashed down the Gaelic inheritance. By statute and \ 
by educational policy the English in Ireland and the i 
Anglo-Irish had done their best to kill Gaelic culture. ; 
Dr. Hyde saw more clearly than any one else that if \ 
the lovers of Ireland did not act for themselves this ' 
barbarity of England would succeed. He did not go j 
to Westminster for help in this struggle. He believed ; 
in self-help. He knew that he could not prevent the ■ 
emigration of the Gaelic-speaking Irish or of the j 
English-speaking Irish who were also Gaelic-speaking. \ 
These numbered 700,000. But he knew that with the \ 
live coal of Gaelic he could still touch the lips of \ 

338 I 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

Ireland, and he and a small group of disinterested, 
non-political enthusiasts started the Gaelic League. 

In this group there was no more conventional politics 
than there had been in the archeological ardor of Sir 
William Wilde and Dr. George Petrie, in the editing 
of texts by O'Donovan and O'Curry, Standish Hayes 
O'Grady and Whitley Stokes. The Gaelic revivalists 
were primarily scholars. Eugene O'Growney of 
Maynooth, a priest ; Dr. Hyde, the son of a Protestant 
clergyman; and John MacNeill of Antrim, founded 
the Gaelic League in 1893. From this beginning, ap- 
parently so academic, a powerful popular development 
was to come. 

It did not come easily. The native speakers were in 
most cases the elders. In ten years a great number 
of them died out. But while it took a little time to 
reach them, it took much more time to reverse the dis- 
pirited or contemptuous attitude of the younger 
generation, to make them see the proud treasure it was 
to have the Gaelic and to bridge the morass of Anglo- 
Irish history back to the Gaelic past. 

The labors of Dr. Hyde and his associates in the 
first fifteen years of the Gaelic League are in them- 
selves a thrilling history. The men and women of the 

339 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

Gaelic League won a decided victory in the end. Ignor- 
ing England, in the first place, they taught all Ireland 
its racial distinctiveness. They lifted the country- 
people out of the mire of the road and the track of the 
plow to a cultural life which was their own. And with 
the revival of Gaelic came annual Gaelic festivals which 
included singing, music, drama, dancing, story-telling. 
Dublin at last became a center for the interior life of 
native Ireland. 

The middle-class Irish, who had little characteristic 
culture outside reading library books, playing the violin 
on wet afternoons, struggling with Italian love-songs, 
and painting on china, were at first inclined to laugh 
at Gaelic, but at last they shed their mad craving to 
perform "Pinafore" under the patronage of the local 
bishop and they broke through their vulgar affectations 
into the real tradition of the people. The Gaelic 
League did something to scour away the dreary 
provincialism of the Irish towns. It revealed a beauty, 
a sincerity, a dignity in the disparaged past of Ireland 
which were totally omitted from the stupid school- 
books of the government system. 

A somewhat grudging appreciation of the Gaelic 
League was yielded by the Irish parliamentarians. But 
the young men and women who saw no England to edify 

340 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

them except the contemporary England of the Boer 
War were deepened in national feeling by Gaelicism. 
In this way the Gaelic revival was inherently political. 
But for many years and against high pressure Dr. 
Hyde maintained the principle of neutrality. The 
league drew strength from each province and from 
every kind of Irishman. Gael and Gall, until 1915, 
hung their shields on the wall side by side and greeted 
one another as human beings. 



Another enterprise, less embracingly national, was 
the dramatic movement which began with the Irish Lit- 
erary Theater in 1899. Edward Martyn was the beget- 
ter of this theater, and with him were George Moore and 
William Butler Yeats. After some years of distin- 
guished work on the lines of an independent "literary'* 
theater Yeats led the experiment to the "four beautiful 
green fields" of Eire. With his own creations of genius, 
most of them drawn from Gaelic sources which had 
been opened afresh by the revival, he and Lady Gregory 
turned the National Theater into the medium of a 
genuinely national expression. It was far from Yeats's 
idea, however, to subordinate the pursuit of beauty to 
the utility of patriotism. He wished instead to liberate 

341 



The Story of the Irish Nation i 

the Irish mind from its fierce preoccupation with means 

to the lovely and glorious ends of the national being ) 

itself. John Millington Synge and Padraic Colum j 

shared this passion with him, Synge in flaming idiom \ 

and Colum in the sober hues and warm notes of a ; 

quieter countryside. Lady Gregory and William Boyle 

were to follow, dramatists in a flight of creativeness i 

such as Ireland had never attempted before. Their \ 

subjects were in nearly all cases the "democracy'^ about ] 

whom so many political scientists had trembled in their j 

armchairs. The actors of this movement (W. G. Fay I 

being the genius among them) were, for the most part, J 

men and women of the native Irish. Had they come 

into Ireland before Yeats and Lady Gregory had or- i 

ganized this rare theater they would have died, as so I 

many Irish died before them, "with their music in \ 

them." I 

The Gaelic revival and the dramatic and literary ! 

renaissance (to which Ernest A. Boyd is the most \ 

I 
competent guide) had a great deal to do with the sub- j 

sequent triumph of national Ireland. Padraic Pearse, \ 

to mention only one of their later leaders, was a : 

disciple of Douglas Hyde's. In 1913 he said, "I have ' 

served under him since I was a boy. I am willing to \ 

serve under him until he can lead and I can serve no \ 

342 ' 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

longer. I have never failed him. He has never failed 
me. I am only one of the many who could write thus." 
It was in Connacht that Pearse studied Gaelic among 
native speakers and renewed his sense of the Gaelic 
inheritance. From Connacht he took the name of his 
famous school, St. Enda's — a school which embodied 
ideals of Irish culture and nationality which the British 
occupation of Ireland had seemed to submerge. 

6 

In this period of non-political, cultural activity 
which was to show such extraordinary national results 
twenty years later, the parliamentarians by no means 
regarded themselves as obsolete, or even secondary in 
national importance. The amiable Justin McCarthy, 
the ingenious and gifted T. P. O'Connor, the grave, 
parochial John Dillon, the salient T. M. Healy, the 
dignified John Redmond, the romantic William O'Brien, 
the radical Michael Davitt — these striking personalities 
attracted a far greater share of public attention than^ 
their inhibited programs justified. In 1895 the Union- 
ists or Tories returned to power in Britain, and the 
natural reaction from Gladstone's compromise with 
nationalism was Salisbury's policy of ^'killing home 
rule with kindness.'* Land legislation was not aban- 

343 



"I 

The Story of the Irish Nation \ 

doned, and the Balfours identified themselves with the 
building of light railways and the establishment of the \ 
Congested Districts Board to- relieve the worst poverty < 
and hardship in the west of Ireland. 




Until 1897 the "split" between Parnellites and anti- 
Parnellites persisted, with John Redmond as the chival- 
rous advocate of Pamellism and John Dillon the new 
chairman of the Gladstonian party. In 1897 Redmond 
took up the revelations of the Childers Commission on 

344 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

the overtaxation of Ireland. Instead of paying one- 
twentieth of Britain's expenditure, the gross ratio, 
Ireland had been compelled to pay about one-eleventh. 
(Ireland's net ratio would, however, be about a thirty- 
sixth.) This overtaxation had amounted, at the low- 
est, to about $2,750,000 a year, and had been going on 
for nearly forty years. To reform this abuse seemed 
to Redmond an adequate program, with the addition 
of home rule, manhood suffrage, political amnesty, and 
land reform. The Tories were not unwilling to make 
concessions. The Local Government Bill, which came 
in 1898, transferred the county councils to farmers 
"without experience" from a select committee of land- 
lords in each county. These new popular bodies soon 
were granted by Dublin Castle to be better adminis- 
trators than the Tory cliques which had preceded them. 
The state purchase of the land was now generally 
advocated. The Anglo-Irish Bourbons said: "Peasant 
Proprietors would be wasteful, extravagant, and not 
industrious. They would subdivide, sublet, and en- 
cumber their lands. Whole counties would fall into 
the hands of money-lenders. The payment of less than 
a 'natural' rent would complete the ruin of a race of 
slaves." But the United Irish League, formed by 
William O'Brien, agitated successfully until, in 1903, 

345 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

the Wyndham Act came after a round-table conference 
between landlords and leaguers. The financing of this 
act was imperfect: it was remedied in 1909. Two 
hundred million pounds of state credit was required 
to capitalize the voluntary transfer of two-thirds of 
the land to peasant proprietors. The Bourbons were 
utterly wrong in their predictions. The program, not 
yet wholly completed, has been a social and economic 
success. The landowners as a class have lost their 
position of privilege, but many of the "old stock," 
so-called, have frankly given up Anglo-Ireland as their 
country and have accepted Ireland. This change in 
national ideal completes a transformation that was 
promised from the day of the Geraldines. 

But agriculture in Ireland remained seriously back- 
ward. Not long before he died Michael Davitt spoke 
witheringly of the tenants : "Nothing short of absolute 
danger or necessity will rouse them out of their dirty, 
slovenly habits of living from hand to mouth, a shift- 
less, thriftless, ignoble existence. When I return home 
from little countries like Denmark, Holland, and Bel- 
gium, it makes me mad to look on at the criminal misuse 
of the best land in Europe, which you see in our mid- 
land counties and around where I live. Next (in my 
view) to the long experience of English rule, I blame 

346 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

our whole education system for this economic ruin of 
our fertile soil." 

It was with critical perceptions like these that 
Horace Plunkett started his great national cooperative 




movement in 189T. In 1895 he had taken advantage of 
the fact that the Unionists (Tories) were favorably 
disposed toward constructive legislation. So far as 
killing home rule with kindness went, it was about as 
intelligent as trying to kill a baby with milk. Nation- 

347 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

ality throve on the process. But Plunkett^s share in 
the procedure was that of a practical diplomat who 
gathered a representative allied committee to frame 
the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruc- 
tion. John Redmond so far gave him his aid. 

Davitt's idea of agricultural education was subordi- 
nate in Plunkett^s program to the organizing of co- 
operative societies. But by the unselfish and arduous 
missionary work of Plunkett, Russell (AE.), and 
Anderson, a tremendous economic advance was made in 
the four provinces, particularly in the milk country 
of Ulster and the midlands. And men came together 
in the cooperative movement, as in the Gaelic League, 
who had never before imagined the possibility of ac- 
commodation and good-will. 



To wheedle Ireland out of its national feeling, how- 
ever, was a policy doomed to failure. As English 
critics of Gladstone had always insisted, this was the 
inherent falsity of home rule. It joined in common 
harness two types of men whose purposes ran in con- 
trary directions — one which was inspired by national 
feeling and wanted to strengthen the Irish nation, the 
other which was inspired by a desire to make a more 

348 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

comfortable place for Ireland inside the British sys- 
tem. 

In converting a considerable body of British opinion 
to home rule, Gladstone had not preached Ireland a 
Nation. For a moment he had pondered the desir- 
ability of establishing Britain and Ireland as a dued 
monarchy, an Austro-Hungarian empire. But this 
idea of equal partnership he had rejected. Britain, 
in the first place, had become immensely rich. It had 
actually twenty times the resources of Ireland; it held 
the balance of power in Europe; it was the policeman 
(and dictator) of the seas. As against its great, 
muscular, brawny presence Ireland looked pitifully 
weak and thin: a potato-fed peasant condemned to a 
"dunghill civilization.'' In Morley's life of Gladstone 
the words dreary, sad, sordid, squalid, are associated 
with virtually every mention of Ireland ; and the sharp- 
ness of Irish wrangling was of itself enough to con- 
vince Britain that the Irish were unfit for equal part- 
nership. Hence a local, subordinate, home rule parlia- 
ment, decided upon by British statesmen as an act of 
the British parliament and extended as the bounty of 
the great British Empire, was the outcome of Glad- 
stone's Liberalism, The native Irish were invited to 
forget their history, to sink their desires. They were 

349 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

warmly promised, and after thirty years granted, "on 
the statute books," a lower constitutional status than 
Newfoundland. 

8 

Working with the British Liberals on a home rule 
program, the parliamentarians completely lost their 
sense of Ireland a Nation, They favored the Boers 
during the Boer War on the principle of the rights 
of small nations, but in their own case they did not hold 
to the principle. An Irish parliament without control 
of taxation, without control of army or navy, without 
control of the militia or volunteers, without any yes 
or no as to conscription, without any voice as to cus- 
toms or excise, without a word as to free political 
utterance, without immediate control of police, with 
an anti-democratic upper house and with a fixed, ex- 
cessive imperial contribution as a first charge on 
revenue — that was the great Liberal Gladstone's idea 
of home rule. In time, too, it became John Redmond's. 
"To talk about Ireland separating from the empire," 
he said in 1910, "is the most utter nonsense. . . . We 
have none of these heroic ambitions land harebrained 
ideas. . . . We simply ask for permission quietly to 
attend to our own business in our own way.'* 

350 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

It seems hardly possible that any so-called liberal 
empire could have refused a once-free people this meas- 
ure of self-government. But the fact is that Britain 
refused even to consider this degree of self-govern- 
ment for Ireland. In 1906 the Liberals under Sir 
Henry Campbell-Bannerman, abetted by Sir Edward 
Grey and H. H. Asquith, proceeded to dole out an 
Irish Council Bill. By this bill the Irish, under paid 
nominees of the crown, were to be permitted to act as 
committees in superintendence of certain departments 
of administration. This bill, proposed by the strongest 
Liberal government that Britain had ever elected, was 
too grotesquely undemocratic to be argued before an 
Irish convention, and the parliamentarians found 
themselves driven to force the Liberals to take up home 
rule. The accession of Asquith, a weakling, did not 
promise well, but one substantial achievement in 1908 
was the founding of a national university which at 
last, in the twentieth century, gave the Irish Catholics 
a real opportunity of higher education. The worst 
effect of the Penal Laws had undoubtedly been Ire- 
land's deficiency in institutions of higher learning. 
The extension of education in 1908 was of national 
importance: for one thing, it gave Pearse and Mac- 
Donagh material which had been lacking in the Rising 

351 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

of '98 and in the work of the Old Fenians. This, with 
the spread of secondary education through the In- 
termediate System begun in 1879, had much to do with 
the subsequent strength of Sinn Fein. 

9 

While John Redmond was preparing to fight for a 
new home rule bill the people of Ireland were not ex- 
cited. John Redmond was a parliamentary chairman, 
not a popular leader, and he took Irish support almost 
completely for granted. His opportunity, in addition, 
was a somewhat technical one. The angry house of 
lords had pulled the "citadel of privilege'' about their 
ears by daring to reject Lloyd George's radical budget. 
They invited the Liberal day of reckoning which they 
could not escape. In 1910 Asquith tried to tem- 
porize: he did not enjoy overriding the lords at the 
instance of the Irish. But the second election of 1910 
confirmed Redmond in his balance of power and gave 
him a right to force the issue against the chamber 
which had repeatedly blocked self-government for Ire- 
land. The parliament act gave the house of commons 
the power to override the house of lords and to carry 
home rule into law. 

But home rule was not to pass unopposed. On the 

352 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

Unionist side it was to meet the intense hostility of 
the Tory Old Guard in England. It had also to stand 
the assault of Belfast and Northeast Ulster. On the 
national side it was to be sharply attacked by the 
skirmishers of Sinn Fein. 

10 

The opposition of the Old Guard in England has 
been vividly recorded by H. G. Wells in his novel, "Joan 
and Peter." After some impatient, contemptuous, hec- 
toring pages on the subject of nationalism, Larkinism, 
Sinn Feinism and everything else, Mr. Wells turns to 
the Old Guard and declares that to Ulster "they owed 
their grip upon British Politics, upon army, navy, and 
education; they traded — nay! they existed — upon the 
open Irish sore. . , . The arming of Ulster to resist 
the decision of parliament was incited from Great 
Britain, it was supported enthusiastically by the whole 
of the Unionist party in Great Britain, its headquar- 
ters were in the west end of London, and the refusal of 
General Gough to carry out the precautionary occupa- 
tion of Ulster was hailed with wild joy in every Tory 
home. It was not a genuine popular movement, it was 
an artificial movement for which the landowning church 
people of Ireland and England were chiefly responsible. 

353 



Tlie Story of the Irish Nation 

It was assisted by tremendous exertions on the part of 
the London yellow press. When Sir Edward Carson 
went about Ulster in that warm June of 191 4<, review- 
ing armed men, promising 'more Mausers,' and pouring 
out inflammatory speeches, he was manifestly prepar- 
ing bloodshed. The old Tory system had reached a 
point where it had to kill men or go." 

In spite of this cold Tory plot, the opposition of 
Belfast to home rule was in great part genuine. During 
the nineteenth century Belfast had built up consid- 
erable industry in linen, cotton, shipbuilding, whisky 
and tobacco. Though situated on Irish soil and draw- 
ing on a population still to some extent Gaelic, it had 
become a modern capitalist city of the second or third 
rank and it had combined with its grim industrialism 
an intense conviction that the Ulster Protestant is 
superior in race and creed to the Southern Catholic, 
and that home rule would mean Rome rule on the 
model of the Inqaisition. This narrow faith was held 
not only by the Presbyterian workman and his woman- 
folk but by the employing class, their clergymen, their 
teachers and their newspapers. The exclusion of 
Catholics from public office in Belfast turned occasion- 
ally with amazing swiftness to the combing of Catholics 
from shop and factory. The Catholics entrenched 

354 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

in Ulster did their best to retaliate for these upheavals, 
and the Ancient Order of Hibernians was a Catholic 
counterpart of the bigoted Orange organization. 

As the most intolerant city in the world Belfast 
presented an acute political problem to the Catholic 
nationalist. The Catholic nationalist had devised no 
real treatment for his inflammation. 

"The great barrier to Irish success," Professor R. 
M. Henry quotes an old Fenian as saying, "is the fear 
of the Protestants — unfounded and unreasonable, but 
undeniably there — that their interests would be in dan- 
ger in a free Ireland. Remove that fear and the Irish 
question is solved." To this end many Irishmen, 
Fenians and non-Fenians, argued. But neither the 
Liberals nor the Nationalists could think of anything 
better to do in regard to Northeast Ulster than to 
say, like Mr. Wells's Peter, "nonsense" or "Fixed 
Ideas" or "foolery" or "it's a nuisance." 

11 

The nationalists to the left of John Redmond were 
definitely willing to give home rule a chance. There 
were a few Fenians still in Ireland, but the tone of most 
Fenians was that of John Devoy in 1911 : "I would not 
incite the unorganized, undisciplined and unarmed peo- 

355 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

pie of Ireland to a hopeless military struggle with Eng- 
land.'^ Padraic Pearse had a similar attitude. In 
1912, in fact, at the opening of the home rule campaign 
he spoke at the same great O'Connell Street meeting as i 
John Redmond : "We have no wish to destroy the \ 
British, we only want our freedom. We differ among 
ourselves on small points, but we agree that we want • 
freedom, in some shape or other. There are two sec- \ 
tions of us — one that would be content to remain under i 
the British government in our own land, another thatj 
never paid and never will pay homage to the King of | 
England. I am of the latter, and every one knows it, I 
But I should think myself a traitor to my country i 
if I did not answer the summons to this gathering, for i 
it is clear to me that the Bill which we support today ; 
will be for the good of Ireland and that we shall be j 
stronger with it than without it. I am not accepting : 
the Bill in advance. We may have to refuse it. We I 
are here only to say that the voice of Ireland must j 
be listened to henceforward. Let us unite and win a * 
good Act from the British; I think it can be done. | 
But if we are tricked this time, there is a party in 
Ireland, and I am one of them, that will advise the ; 
Gael to have no counsel or dealings with the Gall [the ; 
foreigner] for ever again, but to answer them hence- { 

356 i 



.... 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

forward with the strong hand and the sword's edge. 
Let the Gall understand that if we are cheated once 
more there will be red war in Ireland." 

Arthur Griffith in his weekly paper Sinn Fein showed 
a similar tolerance, and in 1912 the executive of the 
Sinn Fein organization expressed the earnest hope that 
the home rule bill would be a genuine measure of reform. 
But Sinn Fein warned the Parliamentarians: "They 
have had the government 'in the hollow of their hands' 
for years — they have removed the house of lords from 
their path — there is nothing to prevent the Liberal 
government introducing and passing a full measure of 
home rule save and except its enmity to Ireland. 
With a majority of over 100 and the lords' veto re- 
moved the fullest measure of home rule can be passed 
in two years. It is the business of the parliamentary 
party to have it passed or to leave the stage to those 
who are in earnest." 

When the terms of the bill were made known Arthur 
Griffith spoke these candid and practical words : 

"The definition of the third Home Rule Bill as a 
charter of Irish liberty is subject to the following 
corrections: The authority of the proposed parlia- 
ment does not extend to the armed men or to the tax- 
gatherer. It is checked by the tidal waters and 

357 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

bounded by the British treasury. It cannot alter the 
settled purposes of the cabinet in London. It may 
make laws, but it cannot command power to enforce 
them. It may fill its purse, but it cannot have its purse 
in its keeping. If this be liberty, the lexicographers 
have deceived us. . . . The measure is no arrangement 
between nations. It recognizes no Irish nation. It 
might equally apply to the latest British settlement in a 
South Sea island. It satisfies no claim of the Irish na- 
tion whose roots are in Tara, or the Irish nationalism 
which Molyneux first made articulate.'* 

From these words of Pears e and Griffith, and from 
the utterances of contemporary Irish labor papers, it 
is evident that new forces had been taking shape in 
Ireland under the surface of conventional politics. 

Arthur Griffith was the son of a Dublin typographer. 
He had founded his weekly the United Irishman in 
1899 and changed its name to Sinn Fein in 1906. In 
1904* he had printed a series of articles entitled the 
"Resurrection of Hungary" and in November, 1905, he 
outlined his Sinn Fein program at the first annual con- 
vention of the Sinn Fein national council, Edward 
Martyn presiding. His was a non-parliamentarian 

358 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

program based on the experience of Hungary. It 
followed the German economist List in its nationalistic 
economics and it advocated self-help on Hungarian 
lines in the belief that it would lead to the ultimate 




freedom of Ireland: "I say ultimate, because no man 
can offer Ireland a speedy and comfortable road to 
freedom, and before the goal is attained many may 
have fallen and all will have suffered. Hungary, Fin- 
land, Poland, all have trodden or tread the road we 

359 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

seek to bring Ireland along, but none repine for the 
travail they have undergone. We go to build up the 
nation from within, and we deny the right of any but 
our own countrymen to shape its course. That course 
is not England's, and we shall not justify our course 
to England. The craven policy that has rotted our 
nation has been the policy of* justifying* our existence 
in our enemy's eyes. Our misfortunes are manifold, 
but we are still men and women of a common family, 
and we owe no nation an apology for living in accord- 
ance with the laws of our being. In the British 
Liberal as in the British Tory we see our enemy, and 
in those who talk of ending British misgovernment we 
see the helots. It is not British misgovernment, but 
British government in Ireland good or* bad we stand 
opposed to, and in that holy opposition we seek to band 
all our fellow-countrymen. For the Orangeman of the 
North, ceasing to be the blind instrument of his own 
as well as his fellow-countryman's destruction, we have 
the greeting of brotherhood as for the Nationalist of 
the South, long taught to measure himself by English 
standards and save the face of tyranny by sending 
Irishmen to sit impotently in a foreign legislature 
while it forges the instruments of his oppression." 

360 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

Ireland's freedom was no less the dream of James 
Connolly, who in 1896 had led a forlorn hope in found- 
ing the Irish Socialist Republican Party. 




James Connolly was bom in Monaghan in 1870 and 
at the age of ten was working for his living in Edin- 
burgh, where his father was a municipal garbage-man. 
After a peculiarly hard youth, in which he combined 
a variety of occupations with continual study, Con- 

361 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

nolly came to Dublin in 1896. Already lie had formu- 
lated his belief that the Irish question was at bottom 
economic and that "the Irish socialist was in reality 
the best Irish patriot." In 1898 he started the Work- 
ers^ Republic, in which he printed his "Labor in Irish 
History." In 1903 he emigrated to the United States, 
where he remained till 1910. When he returned to Ire- 
land, after constant socialist activity in the United 
States, he was not less nationalistic than before. The 
Irish Transport and General Workers' Union was then 
new, and Jim Larkin was a rising star, with Fred 
Ryan and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington among the intel- 
lectuals of Irish socialism. At first Connolly had no 
great popular following but within a few years he and 
Larkin had paved the way for the immense development 
of organized labor in Ireland and in addition had 
given nationalism a militancy which was to be demon- 
strated in 1916. To Connolly the home rule bill was 
play-acting. He was no more a home rule Republican 
than he was a Fabian Socialist. But it was far below 
the surface that men like Padraic Pearse, Sheehy- 
Skeffington, Connolly and Larkin were affecting opin- 
ion. Politicians who believed they knew Ireland, like 
John Redmond, dismissed these figures as "isolated 
cranks." 

362 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

13 

The obvious and striking situation was provided 
by Sir Edward Carson in Northeast Ulster and by the 
Unionists in England. 

It had long been clear to the beneficiaries of Prot- 
estant ascendancy in Ireland that if the home rule 
bill should ever become law there would have to be a 
transvaluation of Irish values. Undesirable as this ap- 
peared to a limited class inside Ireland, it served the 
purposes of the Unionists in England as no other 
issue could have done. It gave the Unionists a chance 
to appeal to religious prejudice, to tribal loyalty, to 
race hatred and the cult of the superior people. Kip- 
ling wrote a poem, as might be expected, and all the 
old animosities were deliberately and enthusiastically 
aroused. As early as 1911 the Unionists of Northeast 
Ulster declared that they would never submit to home 
rule ; and Bonar Law in England, the son of a Canadian 
Orangeman, promptly asserted that armed resistance 
to home rule would be justifiable. "I can imagine no 
length of resistance," he said in 1912, "to which Ulster 
will go in which I shall not be ready to support them." 
With Bonar Law and Carson stood Lord Londonderry, 
Lord Charles Beresford, Lord Hugh Cecil, the Duke 

363 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

of Abercorn, Lord Roberts, Lord Willoughby de 
Broke, F. E. Smith and the whole Unionist party. By 
September, 1912, over 250,000 Ulstermen of fighting 
age were asserted to have signed a solemn league and 
covenant to "stand by one another in using all means 
which may be found necessary to defeat the present 
conspiracy to set up a home rule parliament.'^ "In 
the event of such a parliament being forced upon us," 
the oath concluded, "we further solemnly "pledge our- 
selves to refuse to recognize its authority." 

The organizing of the Ulster rebellion was no secret. 
It was fully advertized to the British cabinet, the Irish 
government, the secret service and the police. From 
1911 onward, rifles and machine guns were freely im- 
ported and the Ulster forces openly drilled, chiefly 
by reserve officers of the British army. In April 1914, 
when war with Germany was almost in sight, Sir Ed- 
ward Carson's followers imported 35,000 rifles and 
2,500,000 rounds of ammunition from Hamburg, which 
the Germans were pleased to supply. A few weeks pre- 
viously Sir Edward had been presented with a silver 
sword at the Ritz hotel in London ; Lord Londonderry, 
Lord Salisbury, the Duke of Marlborough, Sir Bryan 
Mahon, Lord Milner and various other Tories giving 
it to him "in sure hope that God will defend the right." 

364 



TJie Coming of Sinn Fein 

A week later a number of officers at the Curragh, in 
Kildare, resigned rather than serve against the Ulster 
Protestants, the British government being constantly 
advised in public speeches that Northeast Ulster cared 
nothing for the law or the constitution. Contempt 
for the government, in fact, was expressed by nearly 
every leading Unionist. As Lord Birkenhead, then F. 
E. Smith, summarized it: "You are dealing with a gov- 
ernment which understands one argument — the argu- 
ment of force." 

These were dangerous words to bandy in Ireland, and 
they were not wasted on the Republicans, the Irish 
Revolutionary Brotherhood, the Sinn Fein advocates 
and the labor forces in the South. For a long time the 
rank and file of the nationalists could not believe that 
the Ulstermen were really importing cannon, machine 
guns and rifles. "King Carson" was jeered at, and 
the cabinet was echoed when it cried, "opera bouffe.'* 
But while the Ulster rebellion was, no doubt, a staged 
hold-up by which the Liberals were to yield reluctantly 
to the partition of Ireland under the threat of civil war, 
the fraud required for its effectiveness the use of 
genuine military properties, and this was all that was 
needed by the radical nationalists in the South. 

365 



The Story of the Irish Nation '[ 

The fact was indisputable that Carson had made ar- \ 
rangements for a provisional government, that £1,- 
000,000 had been publicly appropriated for Volunteer ; 
widows and orphans, that the British League for ; 
the Support of Ulster was active, that Carson gloried j 
in the fact that "the Volunteers are illegal, and the \ 
government know they are illegal, and the government \ 
dare not interfere with them.'^ These concessions to '\ 
style might or might not be preliminary to a Liberal ; 
betrayal of John Redmond on the plea of avoiding ! 
the horrors of civil war. They established the prece- ' 
dents, at any rate, for which radical nationalists ] 
had long been waiting, never daring to hope or dream ; 
that the grammar of anarchy would be supplied by the ', 
Tories, the army and the lords. \ 

As soon as the British government saw that the South : 
of Ireland was going to copy Carson they prohibited 

the import of arms. But there had been a horrible ; 

■j 

strike in 1913, in which the Dublin employers had \ 
banded together to break down the unionizing of labor, i 
and Jim Larkin elected to form a Citizen Army for 
Irish Workers "by taking a leaf out of the book of \ 
Carson.'* The founding of the Irish National Volun- j 
teers, November, 1913, under the leadership of Eoin \ 

366 i 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

MacNeill, vice-president of the Gaelic League, had 
the effect of slowing down the formation of this Citizen 
Army. But within a few months, under Captain White 
and Madame Markievicz, the body was well organized 
on Carsonian lines. By June, 1914, the Southern 
Volunteers were estimated at 80,000, as against 84,- 
000 Ulster Volunteers; and by July 9, 1914, they were 
reckoned by the police to number 132,000, of whom 
40,000 were army reservists. This retort to Carson 
created an interesting situation. 

15 

It was a situation in which John Redmond as a 
professed constitutionalist felt obliged to act. He 
knew that if the Volunteer movement proceeded inde- 
pendently of his party his power in Ireland was gone 
forever, and he at once negotiated with Eoin Mac- 
Neill and Sir Roger Casement for a share in the control 
of the Volunteers. Eight of the provisional committee, 
including Pearse, resigned when Redmond's nominees 
were accepted. But it was only a question of a few 
months when the body split into two sections: the 
National or Redmond Volunteers and the Irish or 
Sinn Fein Volunteers. 

36T 



The Story of the Irish Nation | 

'■( 

Three events in July, 1914, helped to precipitate : 

the situation which British politics had created in I 

Ireland. \ 

On July 10, armed Ulster Volunteers marched 

through Belfast, and Sir Edward Carson held the first ; 
meeting of his provisional government. 

On July 24, Mr. Asquith, the prime minister, an- i 

nounced that the Buckingham Palace conference on the \ 

partition of Ireland had failed. "The possibility of \ 

defining an area for exclusion from the operation of \ 

the Government of Ireland Bill was considered, and | 

the Conference being unable to agree either in prin- \ 

ciple or in detail on such an area, it concluded." | 

On July 26, the British troops (King^s Own Scottish \ 

Borderers) killed three persons and wounded thirty- two \ 

in Bachelor's Walk, Dublin, on returning from their ; 

futile attempt to stop the gun-running at Howth. i 

These three events did much to disillusion even \ 
moderate home rulers with the British government. : 
The successful gun-running in the North had taken \ 
place with the probable connivance of the authorities. | 
In the South it had led to the killing of innocent per- 
sons. The defiant attitude of Carson and the establish- ' 
ment of his provisional government had involved noth- : 
ing more terrible than a conference with the King at I 

368 ! 



The Coming of Sinn Fein 

Buckingham Palace. And out of this conference had 
come the news that Carson would not accept Redmond^s 
concession of four Ulster counties. In addition he 
wanted Tyrone and Fermanagh to be excluded from 
home rule, even though the nationalists were in a 
majority in those two counties. 

This Tory position was consecrated by the Liberals 
some weeks after the European war had broken out 
when, on September 18, the home rule bill was signed 
but its amendment arranged for and its operation in- 
definitely suspended. 



369 



CHAPTER XII 



THE IRISH REPUBLIC 



"¥ y^ TITH the outbreak of the European war John 
T V Redmond did not wait an instant to consult 
the will of Ireland. "I honestly believe," he told the 
house of commons on August 4, 1914, "that the democ- 
racy of Ireland will turn with the utmost anxiety and 
sympathy to this country in every trial and danger 
with which she is faced." 

Believing that the home rule act was Ireland's magna 
charta, John Redmond did not hesitate for a second to 
haggle because it was amended or suspended. In the 
hour of Britain's urgent need he committed himself and 
Ireland as deeply as possible on the side of the* Allies. 
He made up his mind at once, and never altered it, to 
recruit for Britain among Irish nationalists, and he 
gladly and proudly saw his son and his brother join 
the British army and go to France. 

This pledge of loyalty from John Redmond was 
hailed with delight by Englishmen in politics and out of 

370 



The Irish Republic 

politics, and it netted 50,000 Irish Nationalist fighting 
men within a year. But the guarantees which it drew 
from Asquith, the prime minister, in regard to a dis- 
tinctively Irish corps and in regard to the use of the 
National Volunteers for home defense were never lived 
up to. Instead the pro-war Irish were deeply dis- 
trusted by Kitchener, and, in Lloyd George's phrase, 
were treated with a stupidity which sometimes almost 
looked like malignancy. The truth of Redmond's 
loyalty to Britain was only apparent to men like 
Pearse and MacNeill who split away in disgust from 
his organization of National Volunteers. 

Sinn Fein, the Republicans and the Citizen Army did 
not espouse the cause of the Allies. The intimation 
that Britain was engaged in fighting for the rights of 
smaU nations left critical Irishmen singularly cold. 
The statement of the Liverpool Post in September, 
1914, that "the capture of the German trade is almost 
as vital to the existence of the Empire as the destruc- 
tion of Prussian militarism" was treasured as more ac- 
curate than most of the stories of atrocities, and 
Sinn Fein insisted that "the fact that out of 200,000 
Unionists of military age in Ireland — men who talked 
Empire, sang Empire and protested they would die 
for the British Empire — four out of every five are still 

371 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

at home, declaring they will not have home rule, is proof i 
that the Irish Unionist knows his present business."! 
These sharp comments, however, did not represent the' 
current popular feeling in the South of Ireland. Out; 
of 170,000 National Volunteers, according to Stephen; 
Gwynn, "only a trifle over 12,000 adhered to Professorj 
MacNeill. But in Dublin the opponents were nearly! 
2,000 out of 6,700; and two strong battalions went! 
almost solid against Redmond.'' j 

The "raising of the Irish Brigades," as Mr. Gwynn; 
calls it, kept John Redmond busy in spite of such in-) 
suits to national Ireland as the accession of Sir Edward; 
Carson to the cabinet. But no recruiting campaigaj 
could alter the drift of radical feeling. That feeling] 
was impatient from the start of Britain's pretensions! 
in the war. The suppression of nationalist weeklies,^ 
the deporting of Volunteer organizers and the imprison-i 
ment of an anti-militarist like Sheehy-SkeffingtoB 
simply added to the intense conviction that unless) 
some positive step was taken the Irish nation would 
eventually be conscripted for imperial purposes and soi 
confirmed in subjection. 

2 
Early in the war Roger Casement had gone froraj 
the United States to Germany to procure German aid) 

372 



The Irish Republic 

for a rising in Ireland. In this difficult mission, for 
which he was not equipped by a knowledge of the lan- 
guage, Casement did not succeed in convincing the 
Germans of Ireland's military importance, nor did 




he convince himself of German sympathy or under- 
standing. Early in 1916, indeed, he made up his mind 
that the Germans were anxious to provoke a hopeless 
rebellion in Ireland merely for the sake of creating a 

373 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

temporary "diversion/' and he resolved to stop it if 
possible, since the only aid he could secure from Ger- 
many was a consignment of Russian rifles. 

On Good Friday, 1916, Roger Casement landed on 
the coast of Kerry, with two companions. Arrested by 
stupid mischance, he was taken to the tower of London, 
but not before he conveyed word to MacNeiU to call 
off the rising. 

On Easter Monday, 1916, however, the Volunteer 
forces in Dublin, under Pearse, and the Citizen Army, 
under James Connolly, seized the strategic points in 
the city and from the Post Office proclaimed the Irish 
Republic. 

From Monday, April ^4«, to Sunday, April 30, 
various detachments of the small Republican force held 
out. On April 28 Pearse declared of his comrades, 
**they have redeemed Dublin from many shames, and 
made her name splendid among the names of cities.'' 
And he added, "I am satisfied that we have saved Ire- 
land's honor." One name he mentioned in his procla- 
mation. "I will name only that of Commandant Gen- 
eral James Connolly, commanding the Dublin division. 
He lies wounded, but is still the guiding brain of our 
resistance." 

One of the last leaders to surrender was Eamon de 

374 



The Irish Republic 

Valera, professor of mathematics at Maynooth College, 
who held Boland's Mill until Sunday noon. 



The leaders who surrendered to General Maxwell 
were not treated as prisoners of war. They were re- 
garded as conspirators, rebels and criminals; and the 
soldiers, therefore, of a conquered nation. They were 
court-martialled in batches and ordered shot, day by 
day. 

On May 3, Padraic Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and 
Thomas J. Clarke were shot at dawn. 

On May 4, Joseph Plunkett, Edward Daly, Michael 
O'Hanrahan and William Pearse were executed. 

On May 5, John MacBride was executed. 

On May 7, Cornelius Colbert, Edmund Kent, Michael 
Mallon and J. J. Heuston were executed. 

On May 8, Thomas Kent was executed. 

On May 12, James Connolly, nursed back from his 
wounds, was carried from an ambulance, and shot. 
Sean McDermott was also shot on May 12. 

About 500 lives were lost in the rising, with 1100 
combatants wounded. 

Roger Casement was executed in August, after a 

375 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

state trial, while over a hundred participants in the 
rising were given long terms of imprisonment. 




The rising was neither nation-wide nor popular, in 
spite of several years^ recruiting for the Irish volun- 
teers. But the stealthy military executions which 
followed Easter Week struck like successive blows on 
Ireland's imagination. One coming after another, day 

376 



The Irish Republic 

after day, the killing of these young men reverberated 
through Ireland like the deliberate accent of a mighty, 
somber bell. It was the bell of Ireland's history which 
General Maxwell had tolled, the death-bell of Emmet 
and Tone. 

To an Ireland which had observed the condonation of 
Ulster, these executions opened before its eyes the 
glowing illuminated page of a terrible and sacrificial 
history. Ireland read again the names of glorious 
rebels who had borne their arms on the open field. It 
read the names of rebels who had died on the scaffold. 
To those names it now added Pearse, MacDonagh, 
Connolly, and a litany of others. Labor had taken 
up arms with Gaelic scholarship, and the statesman 
with the poet. Their crime was treason. Their crime 
was love. Their crime was rebellion. Their crime 
was the resurrection of Ireland. 

Once the Irish people looked again to this past, 
across the abyss of conquest and confiscation, they real- 
ized that they still formed the nation which England 
branded as criminal. The deliberate plan of conquest, 
the Elizabethan wars, the settlement of Ulster, Crom- 
well^s savagery, CromwelFs confiscations, the broken 
treaty of Limerick, the penal code, the White Terror 
of '98, the infamous Union, Pitt's broken pledge to 

377 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

emancipate the Catholics, the tithe war, the artificial 
famine, the Insurrection Acts, the Coercion Acts, the 
clearances, the land war, the broken pledge of home 
rule — this unhappy legend simply to prove the truth 
of Lincoln's words: "No man is good enough to rule 
another man, without that other man's consent." 

After the rising, Britain scoured Ireland to find 
every man of quick national feeling and spirit, and 
obeying the least hint of the Royal Irish Constabulary 
and the wildest suspicions of Dublin Castle, swept 3,000 
or more into internment camps across the Irish Sea. 
Then, when the world had pondered how Francis 
Sheehy-Skeffington had met his death during the rising, 
at the hands of an officer reputed insane, Asquith set 
out for Ireland to see what statesmanship could add to 
General Maxwell's contributions. 

Having himself made home rule into a tragic farce, 
having shown neither character nor intelligence in his 
dealings with Redmond, having yielded to the military 
on the executions, Asquith could do nothing except 
make empty and pretentious proposals which deceived 
no one. 

5 

The next great effort of British statesmanship was 
Lloyd George's. Before he became premier in Decem- 

378 




379 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

ber he undertook the role of negotiating an Irish 
peace. As a temporary expedient, Redmond agreed 
to the exclusion of the six Ulster counties and with 
the aid of Devlin secured local consent to temporary 
exclusion. But when this side of the agreement was 
completed, Lord Lansdowne went back on the Unionist 
side of the bargain, and Lloyd George and Herbert 
Samuel tried to comer Redmond into accepting per- 
manent exclusion. This treachery ended Redmond in 
Ireland, as his biographer Stephen Gwynn testifies. 
*'We had incurred the very great odiirni of accepting 
even temporary partition — and a partition which, 
owing to this arbitrary extension of area, could not 
be justified on any ground of principle; we had in- 
volved with us many men who voted for that accept- 
ance on the faith of Redmond's assurance that the 
government were bound by their written word ; and now 
weewere thrown over." 

Lloyd George as premier, however, made another 
spectacular eifort. In May, 191T, he sent out invita- 
tions for a convention of Irishmen who were to frame 
their own proposals for self-government, 'Vithin the 
Empire." And he guaranteed that, "if substantial 
agreement should be reached as to the character and 
scope of the constitution for the future government 

380 



The Irish Republic 

of Ireland within the Empire," his government would 
give legislative effect to it. 

Under the chairmanship of Sir Horace Plunkett 
this convention sat from May, 1917, to April, 1918, 
John Redmond dying in the course of its proceedings. 
By the term "witliin the Empire,'^ and by the fact that 
the delegates were appointed, Sinn Fein was excluded 
from the convention, but even if it had participated 
"substantial agreement" could never have been secured. 
The Ulster Unionist Alliance controlled its delegates as 
a body and had Lloyd George's pledge that "Ulster" 
would never be coerced. The actual outcome of the 
convention was five separate reports, the Southern 
Unionists agreeing to the principle of home rule and 
the Nationalists presenting their case for a "dominion" 
home rule, the Ulster Unionists dissenting. 

The findings of the convention were hardly in Lloyd 
George's hands before he announced that, without 
regard to anything else, he proposed to apply conscrip- 
tion to Ireland. 

No British proposal could have had a more profound 
effect on national Ireland. The Catholic bishops de- 
clared the law was "an oppressive and unjust law, 
which the Irish people have a right to resist by all 
means consonant with the law of God." Several 

381 



The Story^ of the Irish Nation 

Protestant bishops assented, and Sinn Fein, parlia- i 
mentarians and labor united in pledging themselves ; 
against conscription. The impossibility of enforcing j 
it was evident, no matter what the need for men might I 
be, and the discovery of a famous "German plot,'* \ 
which led to the arrest of prominent Sinn Feiners, in \ 
no way helped the government. i 

6 ! 

Not till the armistice and the election which followed \ 

it was the victory of Sinn Fein certainly indicated. \ 

But the 1918 election left no doubt. Out of eighty \ 

nationalist constituencies, seventy-three had voted for \ 

the Irish Republican candidates. On January 21, j 

1919, these members met in the Dail Eireann and issued \ 

Ireland^s declaration of independence: \ 

] 
"Whereas the Irish people is by right a free people ; ■ 

"And whereas for seven hundred years the Irish i 

people has never ceased to repudiate and has repeatedly | 

. . 1 

protested in arms agamst foreign usurpation ; I 

**And whereas English rule in this country is, and \ 
always has been, based upon force and fraud and main- 
tained by military occupation against the declared 
will of the people; \ 

'And whereas the Irish Republic was proclaimed in j 

382 



« 



The Irish Republic 

Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916, by the Irish Repub- 
lican Array, acting on behalf of the Irish people; 

*'And whereas the Irish people is resolved to secure 
and maintain its complete independence in order to 
promote the common weal, to re-establish justice, to 
provide for future defense, to insure peace at home and 
good will with all nations and to constitute a national 
policy based upon the people's will, with equal right and 
equal opportunity for every citizen, 

"And whereas at the threshold of a new era in his- 
tory the Irish electorate has in the general election of 
December, 1918, seized the first occasion to declare 
by an overwhelming majority its firm allegiance to 
the Irish Republic ; 

"Now, therefore, we, the elected representatives of 
the ancient Irish people, in national parliament assem- 
bled, do, in the name of the Irish nation, ratify the 
establishment of the Irish Republic and pledge our- 
selves and our people to make this declaration effective 
by every means at our command. 

"To ordain that the elected representatives of the 
Irish people alone have power to make laws binding 
on the people of Ireland, and that the Irish Parliament 
is the only parliament to which that people will give its 
allegiance. 

383 



The Story of the Irish Nation ^ 

\ 

"We solemnly declare foreign government in Ireland I 
to be an invasion of our national right, which we will | 
never tolerate, and we demand the evacuation of our i 

i 

country by the English garrison; j 

"We claim for our national independence the recog- \ 
nition and support of every free nation of the world, j 
and we proclaim that independence to be a condition i 
precedent to international peace hereafter; ! 

"In the name of the Irish people we humbly commit ' 
our destiny to Almighty God, who gave our fathers the ^ 
courage and determination to persevere through cen-] 
turies of a ruthless tyranny, and strong in the justice | 
of the cause which they have handed down to us, we 
ask His divine blessing on this, the last stage of the i 
struggle which we have pledged ourselves to carry i 
through to freedom." J 

7 . \ 

The policy on which Britain now embarked was toi 

repress the Irish Republic. Denying the Irish anj 

opportunity to present their case before the Peace! 

Conference at Versailles, the British sought to coerce; 

j 
the Irish in a fashion which they themselves had repro-j 

bated in the case of Northeast Ulster. The Irish Re-; 

384 ' 



The Irish Republic 

publicans, however, had useful armed forces. They- 
soon drove the Royal Irish Constabulary into the larger 
towns and cleared the way for the establishment of 
arbitration courts and the functioning of Sinn Fein 
officials in many districts. In the course of 1919-1920 
the number of British troops in Ireland was steadily in- 
creased, and by the middle of 1920 a new force popu- 
larly known as the "Black and Tans" was employed 
to carry out repression and the destruction of life 
and property. The assassination of prominent Re- 
publicans, the torturing and murdering of prisoners,, 
the killing of innocent men, women, and children, the 
destruction of houses, villages, and sections of towns, 
the use of gasoline sprays and bombs in the way of ter- 
rorism, the burning of factories and creameries, the 
destruction of crops and of animals, the practice of 
"reprisals'^ — these were the distinguishing features of 
the British military policy in which about 80,000 
troops were eventually employed, using full war equip- 
ment, bayonets, rifles, bombs, machine guns, tanks and 
airplanes. 

These troops might have cowed aji Ireland which 
had not heard of the rights of small nations and the 
principle of self-determination. Buij in the election of; 

385 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

1918 the Irish people had overwhelmingly afBrmed their 
independence, and they were prepared, weak as they 
were, to wage their fight for freedom. Nor were they 
the open enthusiasts of the United Irish days who re- 
vealed all their plans, nor the simple men of Wexford 
who rushed to arms in a frenzy of indignation. The 
Irish Republic had an educated and disciplined citizen- 
ship to rely on. And it had paid attention to the 
stern and bitter words of Michael Davitt in 1899: 
*'I have for four years tried to appeal to the sense of 
justice in this house of commons on behalf of Ireland. 
I leave, convinced that no just cause, no cause of right, 
will ever find support from this house of commons un- 
less it is backed by force." 

Under de Valera and Griffith, every type of Irishman 
and Irishwoman united — the moral-force advocates, the 
men of physical force who remembered Mitchel and 
Tone, the "one big union" of labor who remembered 
Lalor and Connolly, the believers in an ideal Catho- 
lic state. The heroism of Terence MacSwiney in his 
slow vigil of death, the heroism of Michael Collins in 
his swift embassy of war — these made possible the 
triumph of Ireland. So did the steadfastness of hunger- 
strikers, tortured prisoners, occupied areas, a whole 
country coerced. The wickedness of conquest was 

386 



The Irish Republic 

reenacted, with English soldiers shouting "Halt!'^ to 
Irishmen as in the days of Elizabeth, and English mer- 
cenaries burning houses and murdering prisoners as in 




the days of *98. But not the whole wickedness of con- 
quest, not the war on the Catholic religion and the 
venom of the yeoman, not the quartering of the sol- 
diers and the demonism of rape. And the Irish Re- 
publican Army fought back, harassed the enemy, 

387 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

planned ambushes and carried out the killing of hun- 
dreds of individual men. 

The war in Ireland, 1920-21, was to the Irish people 
an intolerable and hateful revival of a conquest steeped 
in shame. England, under the goad of agitation, had 
undone its work of confiscation. It had, bit by bit, un- 
latched the Penal Laws. Could England now have 
candor, have courage, to meet "the claim of the Irish 
nation whose roots are in Tara".? 

8 

In July, 1921, began the negotiations between Lloyd 
George and the Irish Republic. 

The British people had, in 1914, rallied like one man 
against the armed invasion of Belgium. They 
showed no such emotion, not even in the ranks of 
labor, when their own army of occupation held Ireland. 
But the process of re-conquest was not genuinely sup- 
ported in Britain. Lloyd George and Hamar Green- 
wood could not go the limit. The negotiations, there- 
fore, were in some measure a response to conscience, 
though Lloyd George refused from the start to debate 
"any abandonment, however informal, of the principle 
of allegiance to the King, upon which the whole fabric 

388 



The Irish Republic 

of the empire and every constitution within it are 
based." 

On September 30, 1921, de Valera consented to a 




conference ''with a view to ascertaining how the as- 
sociation of Ireland with the community of nations 
known as the British Empire may best be reconciled 
with Irish National aspirations." 

The treaty of December, 1921, later accepted by a 

389 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

bare majority of the Dail Eireann, became early in 
1922 the subject of perhaps the most searching con- 
troversy in which Irishmen ever engaged. 

9 

For Ireland, much more than for England, the 
present treaty is a problem. The wise Irishman knows 
that this treaty forces him into an undesired associa- 
tion with England. He also knows that many peoples 
have lost everything they desired because they could 
not read their fate. 

Beneath these modern nations, his own and Eng- 
land's, there still lurks the savage Northman, the 
savage Celt, the barbarous Briton or Saxon, only a 
few hundred years out of his cave. In those few hun- 
dred years, by the trembling light of reason, in the 
search for the good life, men have gained a little se- 
curity and civilization. But the process is slow, and the 
war-mind distorts it. For a thousand years Ireland 
has been afflicted by the war-mind. Would it now be 
wise to engage solely in the slow, laborious, rational 
processes of peace and consent? 

Is the poem of Seumas Cartan still worth remem- 
bering? 

The Irish nation has suffered. It can blame conquest, 

890 



The Irish Republic 

theft, tyranny, for much of its sufferings. But in this 
world of half-savage, half-reasonable, wholly human 
beings it can only expect its absolute rights if it for- 
gets its own humanity. 

As Ireland purges itself of the war-spirit, under- 
standing its enemies as well as fighting them, it will 
see its way to accepting or rejecting the imperfect 
measure which its human agents have wrought. 

Perhaps even that imperfect measure may help it 
to stride to a new and happier history. So its agents 
hoped. And Ireland's history can scarcely continue 
to be so incomparably unjust and tragic. It is destined 
to be free, and to belong to the whole world. For every- 
where there are hopes that attend Ireland. Men look 
especially to those who have served the Irish nation in 
its worst crisis — de Valera, Griffith, Collins, the men 
and women of the Dail Eireann. These men and women 
are responsible to something deeper than names and 
phrases. They have a positive, creative task before 
them. They will be judged by their charity, their wise 
tolerance, their divination. They will be judged above 
all by their unity as Irishmen for Ireland. 



391 



BOOKS CONSULTED 

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G. A. Moonan. Longmans. 
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mans. 
"Pagan Ireland," by Eleanor Hull. M. H. Gill & Son. 
"Pre-Christian Ireland," by U. J. Burke. Browne & Nolan. 
"A Literary History of Ireland," by Douglas Hyde. Fisher 

Unwin. 
"Phases of Irish History," by Eoin MacNeill. B. Herder. 
"The Making of Ireland, and Its Undoing," by Alice Stopford 

Green. Macmillan. 
"Strongbow's Conquest of Ireland," edited by Barnard. Putnam. 
"The Midland Septs and the Pale," by F. R. M. Hitchcock. Sealy. 
"Sir Walter Raleigh in Ireland," by Pope Hennessy. Kegan Paul 

Trench. 
"The Pohtical History of England, 1066-1216," by G. B. Adams, 

Longmans. 
"Life of Hugh O'Neill," by John Mitchel. J. Duffy. 
"Ireland," by Charles Johnston. John C. Winston. 
"Confiscation in Irish History," by W. F. T. Butler. Talbot Press. 
"Ireland the Outpost," by Grenville A. J. Cole. Oxford University 

Press. 
"Dublin," by Samuel A. Ossory Fitzpatrick. Dutton. 
"The Scotch-Irish in America," by Henry Jones Ford. Princeton 

University Press. 
"The Prince," by Nicolo Macchiavelli. Dutton. 
"O'Neill and Ormond," by Diarmid Coffey. Norman Remington. 
"Oliver Cromwell," by Samuel Rawson Gardiner. Longmans. 
"Oliver Cromwell," by John Morley. Century. 
"The Beginnings of Modern Ireland," by Philip Wilson. Norman 

Remington. 
"Ireland in the European System," by James Hogan. Longmans, 
"The Economic Writings of Sir W. Petty," edited by Charles 

Henry Hull. Cambridge University Press. 
"The Story of Mankind," by H. W. van Loon. Boni & Liveright. 
"History of Western Europe," by James Harvey Robinson. Ginn. 

392 



Books Consulted 

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ledge. 
"The Indestructible Nation," by P. S. O'Hegarty. Maunsel. 
"A Hundred Years of Irish History," by R. Barry O'Brien. 
"Two Centuries of Irish History," edited by R. Barry O'Brien. 

Murray. 
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"A Short History of Scotland," by C. S. Terry. Cambridge. 
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Fallon Brothers. 
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Coffey. Hodges, Figgis. 
"Ireland," by Emily Lawless. Putnam. 

"The Story of Burnt Njal," translated by G. W. Dasent. Dutton. 
"Prose Writings of Swift," arranged by Walter Lewin. Walter 

Scott Co. 
"A Short History of the English People," by J. R. Green. Harper. 
"The Economic History of Ireland in the Seventeenth Century," 

by George O'Brien. Maunsel. 
"Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," by W. E. H. Lecky, five 

volumes. Appleton. 
"The Great Fraud of Ulster," by T. M. Healy. M. H. Gill & Son. 
"The Constitutional and Parliamentary History of Ireland Till 

the Union," by J. G. Swift MacNeill. Talbot Press. 
"A Constitutional History of England," by G. B. Adams. Holt. 
"State Policy in Irish Education, 1536-1816," by T. Corcoran. 

Longmans. 
"A Hidden Phase of American History," by M. J. O'Brien. Dodd, 

Mead. 
"The Evolution of Sinn Fein," by R. M. Henry. Talbot Press. 
"The Viceroy's Post Bag," by Michael MacDonagh. Murray. 
"Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland," by W. E. H. Lecky, two 

volumes. Longmans. 
**The Economic History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," by 

George O'Brien. Maunsel. 
"The Autobiography of Wolfe Tone," edited by R. Barry O'Brien* 

Fisher Unwin. 
"The War in Wexford," by Wheeler and Broadley. John Lane, 
"Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature," Vol. IV, by 

Georg Brandes. Macmillan. 
"Essays Relating to Ireland," by C. Litton Falkiner. Longmans. 
"Pitt," by Lord Rosebery. Macmillan. 
"The Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation," by Sir Jonah Barrington. 

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coeur. Dutton. 

393 



The Story of the Irish Nation 

"Ireland From '98-'98," by W. O'Connor Morris. Innes. 

"A Consideration of the State of Ireland in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury," by G. Locker Lampson. Button. 

"The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland," by Michael Davitt. Harpers. 

"Michael Davitt," by F. Sheehy Skeffington. Fisher Unwin. 

"The History of Landholding in Ireland," by Joseph Fisher. Long- 
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"Life of Gladstone," by John Morley, three volumes. Macmillan. 

"The Life of Parnell," by R. Barry O'Brien. Harper. 

"The Parnell Movement," by T. P. O'Connor. Cassell. 

"Labour in Ireland," by James Connolly. Maunsel. 

"Cooperation and Nationality," by G. W. Russell. {M.) Maunsel. 

"The Irish Convention and Sinn Fein," by Wells and Marlowe. 
Maunsel. 

"Resurrection of Hungary," by Arthur Griffith. Whelan. 

"The Irish Labor Movement," by W. P. Ryan. Huebsch. 

"Contemporary Ireland," by L. Paul-Dubois. Baker & Taylor. 

"The Life of John Redmond," by Warre B. Wells. Doran. 

"Ireland's Literary Renaissance," by E. A. Boyd. Lane. 

"Wakeman's Irish Antiquities," edited by John Cooke. Hodges, 
Figgis. 

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"John Redmond's Last Years," by Stephen Gv/ynn. Longmans. 

"The Unbroken Tradition," by Nora Connolly, Boni and Liveright. 

"A Handbook for Rebels," compiled by Thomas Johnson. Maunsel. 

"The Story of the Irish Citizen Army," by P. O'Cathasaigh. 
Maunsel. 

"The Resurrection of Hungary," by Arthur Griffith. Whelan. 

"The Irish Rebellion of 1916," edited by Maurice Joy. Devin- 
Adair Co. 



394 



POPULATION 



1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 19il 19^3 



8.000.000 
7,000,000 
6,000,000 
6,000.000 
4,000.000 
3,000,000 
2,000,000 
1,000,000 



CSHSUS .YEAR 



IRELAiro 
SCOTLAND 



3 




Drawn by J. D, Hacketfl 



395 



INDEX 



Agrarian Societies: Whiteboys, 
183; Oakboys, 184; Hearts-of- 
Steel Boys, 184; Defenders, 
212; Peep o' Day Boys, 212; 
Ribbonmen, 273. 

Allen, Larkin and O'Brien: 178. 

Ancient Order of Hibernians: 
355. 

Anglo-Irish Ascendancy: be- 
gun, 169; its Protestant tone, 
199; inflamed, 231-232; domi- 
nates administration, 239-240; 
last stand, 363. 

"Ardagh" chalice: 51. 

Asquith, H. H.: 378. 



B 



Bachelor's Walk: affray in. 368. 
Benburb : 126. 
"Black and Tans": 385. 
Boyne, battle of the: 158. 
Brandes, Georg: quoted as to 

1798, 215. 
Brehon law: 32-34. 
Brian Boru: at Clontarf, 56-59; 

rule of, 60. 
Bruce, Edward: high-king of 

Ireland, 93; killed, 94. 
Butt, Isaac: 292-293. 



Carson, Sir Edward: 354, 363. 

Cartan, Shemus: poem trans- 
lated by Lady Gregory, 105. 

Casement, Sir Roger: goes to 
Germany, 373; captured, 374; 
executed, 375. 

Castlereagh: as corruptionist, 
235-237. 

Catholic Emancipation : be- 
trayed by Pitt, 247; passed, 
248-250. 

Catholics: their timidity, 199- 
200; organized by Tone, 230. 

Celt: origin of, 8. 

Church: early independence of, 
41-42; ends raids on Britain, 
51; subordinated to Normans, 
67; Papal Bull Laudabiliter, 
74; Synod of Clonmel, 75; 
Penal laws, 162-168; aids 
common people, 173-174; sup- 
ports Union, 233; during 
famine, 265; under Cardinal 
Cullen, 272; condemns Land 
League, 304; denounces Par- 
nell, 318; cooperates with 
Gladstone against Parnell, 
326 ; against conscription, 
375. See Catholic emancipa- 
tion. Catholics, Tithes. 

Citizen Army: 366; 374. 



397 



Index 



Clontarf : 56-58. 

Clyn, Friar John: quoted, 94. 

Coercion acts: 280-281. 

Collins, Michael: 386. 

Columbanus: 48. 

Columcille: 48, 52. 

Confiscations: under Mary, 118; 
under Elizabeth, 124; under 
James I, 131-139; under 
Cromwell, 152-154 ; under 
William III, 162. 

Connolly, James: his career, 
361-362; bravery, 3T4; exe- 
cuted, 375. 

Cooperation. See Horace Plun- 
kett. 

Cornwallis: admits ~ outrages, 
224-225 ; captures Humbert, 
225; dislikes corruption, 234- 
237. 

'Councils Bill: 351. 

Cromwell, Oliver: arrives Ire- 
land, 146; campaign, 146-150; 
confiscations, 150-154. 

Curlews, battle of the: 127. 



de Barri, Gerald: describes 

Normans, 78. 
Derbfine: 18. 

Desmond, earl of: 123-124. 
de Valera, Eamon: 375. 
Devoy, John: works with Davitt, 

297-298; on revolution, 355- 

356. 
Diamond, battle of the: 212. 
Drogheda massacre: 146-149. 
Druids: 31-32. 
Dublin Castle: 239-240. 



E 



Education: proselytizing ifij 
174; primary system of, 253- 
254; Young Ireland and, 263; 
funds for, 286; university 
bill, 287; Davitt criticizes, 
346-348 ; national university, 
351-352. 

Elizabeth : applauds conquest, 
121-122. 

Emmet, Robert : insurrection 
of, 240-244. 

Erigena, John Scotus: 48. 



Dail Eireann: first meeting, 

383. 
Danes. See Vikings. 
Davies, Sir John: confiscation 

policy, 139. 
Davis, Thomas. See Young 

Ireland. 
Davitt, Michael: his career, 299; 

meets Parnell, 300; meets 

Devoy, 302; land agitation, 

304-308; criticizes farmers, 

346. 



F 



Famine: in 1640-1641, 172; in 

1846-1849, 265-270. 
Fenians: founded, 275; and 

Gladstone, 278-279. 
Feudalism: introduced, 87-88. 
Firbolg: coming of, 6; conquest 

of, 10; castes of, 14. 
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward: heads 

insurrection, 218-220. 
Fitzwilliam: lord lieutenant, 

206-208. 



398 



Index 



"Flight of the Earls." See 

Hugh O'Neill. 
Ford, Henry Jones: quoted as 

to Scotch-Irish, 137-138. 
France: at Battle of the Boyne, 

158; helps Wolfe Tone, 211; 

sends Humbert, 225; sends 

Wolfe Tone, 225-228. 

G 

"Gaelic fringe": 20. 

Gaelic League: need for, 338; 
started, 339-341. 

Gaelic Revival: 341-342. 

Genealogies: 25. 

George, Lloyd: negotiations of, 
380; appoints convention, 
380; negotiates with Irish Re- 
public, 388. 

Geraldines: 100-104; 120; 123- 
124. 

Gladstone: on Fenianism, 279; 
fiscal policy of, 284; dises- 
tablishment, 283-286; land 
policy of, 309-311 ; political 
skill of, 312; attempts com- 
promise with Tories, 319; 
introduces home rule, 320; 
against Parnell, 324-327; ca- 
reer closes, 333. 

Grattan, Henry: nationalism of, 
182; leadership, 187-188; gra- 
titude for "independent" par- 
liament, 191 ; leaves parlia- 
ment in protest, 216; sup- 
ports Catholic emancipation, 
247. 

Green, Alice Stop ford: quoted, 
95. 

Griffith, Arthur: 357-360. 



H 



Henry II: aids Dermot Mac- 
Murrough, 69; Papal Bull, 
74; in Ireland, 75-76; descrip- 
tion of, 79. 

Henry VIII: policy of, 106-108; 
King of Ireland, 111. 

Home Rule: agitation begins, 
291; first bill, 320; second 
bill, 333; defects, 349-350; 
third bill, 352-353. 

Hyde, Dr. Douglas: quoted, 
42-50 ; president Gaelic 
League, 338. 



Iberians: 5. 

Insurrections: of 1641, 142; of 
1798, 215; of 1848, 265; of 
1867, 277; of 1916, 374. 

K 

Keating, Geoffrey: quoted on 
English commentators, 142. 

Kilkenny, Confederation of: 
145. 

Kinsale, siege of: 128. 



Land League: founded, 308; 
suppressed, 313. 

Land system: defects, 257; re- 
form begins, 287-289; state 
purchase, 345-346. 

Land War: in Ulster, 184; in 
the South, 313. 

Limerick, Treaty of: 162. 



399 



Index 



M 



Mac Art, Cormac: reign of, 25; 
description of, 27-29. 

MacCool, Finn: poem by, 13. 

MacMurrough, Art: harries 
English, 97-98. 

MacMurrough, Dermot: King 
of Leinster, 68; seeks Nor- 
man aid, 69; accompanies 
Normans, 72. 

McCracken, Henry Joy: exe- 
cuted, 222. 

Mitchel, John : Young Irelander, 
262; revolutionary, 2Q4i\ de- 
ported, 2Q5. 



N 



Nation, The: founded, 261. 

Niall of the Nine Hostages: '2Q. 

Normans: civilization of, 63-66; 
landing of, 71 ; description of, 
72-83; effects of invasion, 84- 
86; settlements of, 89; inter- 
marriage with Gaels, 91; 101. 

O 

O'Connell, Daniel: opposes Un- 
ion, 244; youth of, 244-246; 
Catholic emancipation, 248- 
250; enters house of com- 
mons, 251; with Melbourne, 
253; lord mayor of Dublin, 
254; repeal movement, 258; 
end of career, 259-260. 

O'DonneH, Hugh Roe: kid- 
napped, 125; joins Hugh 
O'Neill, 126 ; assassinated, 
128. 



O'Donnell, Manus: 116. 

O'Donnell, Rory: flight of, 129- 
130. 

O'Neill, Con: becomes earl. 111; 
fights heir, 116. 

O'Neill, Hugh: plans war, 125; 
success, 126; failure, 128; 
flight, 129-130. 

O'Neill, Owen Roe: general, 
143-146; usages in war, 149. 

O'Neill, Shane: 117. 

Orangemen: founded, 212. 

Ormonde, James, Duke of: 
Royalist general, 145-146; in- 
dustrial plans of, 176. 

O'Shea, Katherine: 31T-318. 
See Parnell. 



Parliament. See Political Struc- 
ture. 

Parliamentary party. See Par- 
nell, Davitt, Redmond. 

Parnell, Charles Stewart : enters 
public life, 293; policy, 294- 
297; obstructionist, 303-304; 
land agitation, 306; in jail, 
314; cooperates with Glad- 
stone, 320; "Times" Commis- 
sion, 322 ; O'Shea divorce case, 
323; last fight, 327-329; ef- 
fects of his career, 332-334. 
See Katherine O'Shea. 

Patrick, Saint: 30; confession 
of, 35-39; mission of, 40-41. 

Pearse, Padraic: and Gaelic 
League, 342-343 ; supports 
home rule, 356; leads rising, 
374. 



400 



Index 



"Penal Code": enacted, 162-168; 
relaxed, 183. 

Pension List: abuses of, 179. 

Petty, Sir William: estimates 
population, 150, 155. 

Phoenix Park murders: 315-316. 

Picts: 5. 

Pitt: desires Union, 204-205; re- 
calls Fitzwilliam, 208; passes 
Union, 234-237; betrays Cath- 
olic emancipation, 247. 

"Plan of Campaign": 321. 

Plunkett, Sir Horace: coopera- 
tive movement, 347; presides 
over convention, 381. 

Plunkett, Saint Oliver: exe- 
cuted, 157. 

Political structure : pentarchy, 
24; struggle for high-king- 
ship, 53; "Kings with opposi- 
tion," 61 ; Norman parliament, 
91 ; Gaelic unity, 92 ; parlia- 
ment of 1689, 158; Anglo- 
Irish parliament, 177-183; "in- 
dependent" parliament, 187- 
188; limits to "independence," 
192-194. 

Poyning's Act: 100, 175. 

Pre-Celts: 5. See Firbolg. 

Pretani: 20. 



Reformation: Tinder Henry 
VIII, 108; under Elizabeth, 
118. 

Richard II: 97. 

Roman Empire: and Gaels, 23. 

Roosevelt: on Cromwell, 148- 
149. 



Scandinavians. See Vikings. 

Schools and Scholars: early 
work of, 42-50; in twelfth 
century, 67; at Oxford, 95. 

Scoti: 21. 

Sheares, John and James: exe- 
cuted, 221. 

"Silken Thomas": rebellion of, 
103; execution of, 104. 

Sinn Fein, founded, 357. See 
Arthur Griffith. 

Smerwick massacre: 120-122. 

Spain: helps Ireland, 120, 128. 

Spenser, Edmund : describes 
conquest of Munster, 123. 

Stephens, James: 275-277. 

"Strongbow": 71, 78. 

Swift, Dean: describes Irish 
misery, 169-171 ; political 
ideals of, 178, 



R 



Raid of Cooley: 14. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter: 121-122. 

Redmond, John: 344; against 
separation, 350; third home 
rule bill, 352 ; Volunteers con- 
trolled by, 366; supports Eu- 
ropean war, 370; tricked by 
Lloyd George, 380. 



T 



"Tara" brooch: 51. 

Tithes: injustice of, 255; agita- 
tion against, ^5Q\ removed, 
285. 

Tone, Wolfe: describes condi- 
tions, 196-198; as to "inde- 
pendent" parliament, 200; 



401 



iTideoc 



secretary Catholic Committee, 
203; separatist, 210-212; ob- 
jects, 214; captured and exe- 
cuted, 225-22S. 

"To Hell or Connacht": 153. 

Towns: founded by Anglo-Nor- 
mans, 96; depletion, 154. 

Trade: 1200-1600, 95; British 
destruction of, 175-176; em- 
bargoes, 185; restraints and 
the Pitt treaty, 201-204. 

U 

Ui NeiU: 53. 

Ulster: clearances in, 134; Scot- 
tish settlers in, 137; insur- 
rection of 1641, 142; republi- 
canism in, 209; bitterness of, 
232; Tory control of, 353; 
in rebellion, 363-365; seeks 
partition, 368-369. 

United Irishmen: pro-French, 
190; spiritual origins, 201; 
program of, 206; activity of, 



209; helped by Orange fe- 
rocity, 214; plan insurrection, 
218. 
Union, the: desired by Pitt, 
204-205; carried, 233-237; 
Act, 238-239. 



Vikings: first raids of, 54-55; 

Clontarf, 56. 
Volunteers: in 1779, 185-188; in 

Ulster, 365-366 ; in the South, 

366-367. 

W 

Wentworth: economic policy of, 

140-141. 
Wexford: rising in, 239-334. 



Yellow Ford: 126. 
Young Ireland: 261-26$, 



402 








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